James Dean: Little Boy Lost [Hardcover ed.] 0446516430, 9780446516433

Citation preview

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JPW* 4J,

>:i

ns

1 J

A

M

H

E

YA

WITH JAY HYAMS

o

VAARNER

BOOKS

A Time Warner Company

Management Group, Dean Foundation Trust.

Letters reprinted by permission of Curtis

Copyright

©

1992 by the James

©

Copyright

1992 by Joe

Hyams and

Jay

Inc.

Hyams

All rights reserved.

Warner Books.

Inc., 1271

Avenue of

the Americas,

New

York,

NY

10020

A Time Warner Company Printed in the United States of America First printing:

10

November 1992

987654321

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hyams, Joe. James Dean p.

:

little

boy

lost

/

Joe and Jay Hyams.

cm.

Includes index.

ISBN

0-446-51643-0

Dean, James, 1931-1955. 2. Actors Hyams, Jay, 1949II. Title.

1. I.

PN2287.D33H9

— United States — Biography.

.

1992

791.43'028'092— dc20 91-51172

[B]

CIP

Book

design by L.

McRee

To Ortense and Marcus Winslow and to Marcus Winslow, Jr., the keeper of the flame

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2012

http://archive.org/details/jamesdeanlittlebOOhyam

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

/

Chapter One

THE OUTSIDER

7

Chapter Two

MACBETH,

ST.

JOHN,

AND A BLOODIED CAPE 28

Chapter Three

SWISHY-SWASHY 42 Chapter Four

55

RIPPING OFF LAYERS

Chapter Five

THE

LITTLE PRINCE

70

Chapter Six

THE IMMORALIST 88 Chapter Seven

HOLLYWOOD 105 Chapter Eight

EDEN

115

VII

CONTENTS Chapter Nine

136

PIER

Chapter Ten

THE NIGHT

WATCH 159

Chapter Eleven

THE LAST

179

VISIT

Chapter Twelve

DANGEROUS

190

SKILL

Chapter Thirteen REBEL

203

Chapter Fourteen

GIANT 220 Chapter Fifteen

239

THE LAST RACE

Chapter Sixteen

248

THE IMPACT EPILOGUE

263

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 272 BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

vttt

284

282

My

candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends It gives a lovely light!

— Edna

St.

Vincent Millay

INTRODUCTION

is

J- JL

began with the distant sound of a motorcyand as the sound grew louder my son Jay would

visits

cle,

grow increasingly excited. When the roar of the motorcycle came down our street and then stopped in front of our house, Jay would shriek, "Jimmy's here! Jimmy's here!" Booted feet would stamp up the front steps, and then the door would burst open. James Dean never knocked or came in the way anybody else did: he always made an entrance. Most often he was carrying a paper bag full of ice cream containers. He came to our house often because, he said, he missed Markie, the young cousin he had grown up with in Indiana, and Jay, then five, was about Markie's age. Jimmy had a remarkable ability to communicate with children, the younger the better. He listened attentively to Jay's stories about his school friends and asked the questions one youngster asks another: Why do you like so and so? Is he stronger than you? Are you afraid of the dark? He paid close attention to the answers and to the body language. I sometimes felt he knew more about my son than I myself did. He and Jay would often break up with laughter, their sentences left unfinished, interrupted by conspiratorial giggles. My wife, Elly, watched with an indulgent smile: Jimmy was a favorite of hers, which was convenient for me because it meant she didn't object when I went out in the evening with him, something I did fairly

JAMES DEAN She got along famously with Jimmy because he showed a life, looked intently into her eyes, and seemed able to relate to her with effortless ease. Jimmy occupied a special space in our family, seemed to truly yearn for that space, but sometimes as I watched him I wondered just who the real Jimmy was. I knew that before the night was out, after he'd finished a mixed pint of coffee and raspberry ice cream and helped Jay put his toy cars away, after he'd pecked Elly good night and hopped back on his motorcycle, he would probably prowl the town until the wee hours and would most likely end up having sex with someone, somewhere. Usually a starlet or a waitress, sometimes in his car or against his car or in her apartment or in someone he never went to his own home, as far as anyone else's apartment knew. I knew what he told me about women, and I had heard the rumors about Jimmy. But I knew the difference between rumor and fact, and I really didn't care what Jimmy did or who he did it with. Even had the rumors been true it wouldn't have mattered. What Jimmy did with his private life was his secret, and keeping secrets was my stock-in-trade as a columnist for The New York Herald Tribune. I was well aware of leading men, macho heroes of advenoften.

simple, direct interest in her

—

who spent their afternoons admiring the tanned bodies of the boys who cleaned their pools, and the others who went out in the evening dressed in women's clothes. I also knew about the female sex bombs, the women all American men wanted to undress or so their press agents claimed who spent their evenings alone because most men were certain they were too popular to ask out, and the others who went out alone at night and picked up young men and paid for motel rooms. That was part of Hollywood then as well as now. I knew many of the secrets of the sunture films,

—

—

washed community that was my beat, and I also guessed that the folks in Hollywood were no better or worse than the people in any other American city. Jimmy was a friend. Not one I could ever depend on except possibly in a barroom brawl: he was gutsy and not afraid of getting hurt. He rarely picked up a tab. He didn't call when promised. Didn't give back what was borrowed, didn't do what he had said he would do. I never knew exactly what he wanted or hoped for

INTRODUCTION from me, and

never

I

knew what

wanted or hoped

I

for

from

him.

seems

me

by being around him was already happening, but I just wasn't smart enough to get it. He was fascinating to be with and watch. There was the way he moved. He could lift a glass of water to his mouth with an intensity and grace that made it seem he had never before touched a glass, never carried that particular weight through the air. What he said wasn't especially smart or memorable: it was the way he said it that made it interesting, the delivery and the hand gestures. I never felt I was a disciple and should take notes because they would be valuable someday. Nor did I realize that I was lucky to be his friend until years later when he became a legend. There was an afternoon, warm and sunny, and Jay was home from school and wasn't happy. "He's been like that all afternoon," said Elly. I realized my son was upset by something, but I had a column to write on deadline and left it to her to sort out. Then a few hours later there was the roar of the motorcycle, Jay's shrieks of joy, and Jimmy's arrival. Jimmy saw, even sooner than I had, that something was wrong with Jay, and he put aside the packages of ice cream, barely acknowledged my presence and that of Elly, and took Jay aside. I tried to listen to their conversation, not as a In retrospect

it

something was about

to

to

that

happen

journalist but as a father, but

I

I

felt

or

could

make out

little

of

it.

Soon,

was back, the packages of ice cream were opened, and we were all sitting on the floor, laughing at something. Only a long time later did I learn that the mailman had been

Jay's smile

frightening Jay with stories about a

night and carried off children to eat

man made

it

through his day

what James Dean

—

said to Jay to

boogeyman who came in the them. That was how the mail-

terrifying children.

do away with

I

don't

his fears,

know

but he did

What I do remember is "Jimmy says he can go so fast

so casually, effortlessly, and completely.

what Jay said excitedly after he left. on his motorcycle that no one can see him!" On October 1, 1955, I was in Mexico City to interview the actor Cantinflas, who was filming a cameo role for Around the World in 80 Days. Bill Blowitz, press agent on the film, and I had just finished breakfast when we went by the hotel newsstand. I noticed a copy

JAMES DEAN of the Saturday

New

York Herald Tribune on the rack, and glanced

lower right-hand corner was the headline:

at the front page. In the

FILM ACTOR JAMES DEAN, 24, KILLED IN SPORTS CAR CRASH. I must have turned ashen because Bill asked me if I was

"Jimmy Dean's been

killed,"

I

"He asked me to go with him we left L.A."

said

all right.

and handed the paper

to

him.

to the race in Salinas yesterday just

before

As

Bill

read the story

I

had conflicting thoughts.

I

wanted

to call

home and tell Elly to be careful how she broke the news to Jay, who I knew would be devastated. Then I realized that the news was

a

day

old.

newsman and

I

felt strongly that

friend,

there was something that

I,

a

should be doing about Jimmy's death.

I

add something human and personal to the wire service my paper had put on the front page. I called my editor in New York, who said, "Dean was really not that well known to warrant much more space than we've already given him." I realized he was right. Of the three pictures Jimmy had starred in, only one, East of Eden, had been released, and although his performance was acclaimed by the critics, the general public was scarcely aware of him. There was no way that I or anyone else at that time could predict the impact his death would have on young

wanted

to

report that

people After

all

over the world.

Jimmy

died, his second and third pictures, Rebel Without

a

Cause and Giant, were released and his fans grew posthumously to legendary proportions.

Many

of

them refused

to accept his death,

worldwide James Dean cult began to develop. It has been thirty-seven years since James Dean died, and over the years I often considered writing a book about him, but discarded the idea because I felt my memories might be too private, and I didn't want to betray a trust. My recollections of conversations and events have matured to the point, however, that I believe I have something to say about him that has not yet been said. To buttress my own recollections and to write this book, I have interviewed most of the people who knew Jimmy, including myself. We are all past middle age (Jimmy would have been sixty this year) and our memories of Jimmy differ in many important ways. I have come to the conclusion that although we all knew Jimmy, each of

and

4

a

INTRODUCTION knew a different person, one who was a mass of contradictions and who presented a unique persona to each of us.

us

Depending on which of his

ex-lovers

I

interviewed he was either

heterosexual, asexual, bisexual, or homosexual. Friends describe

him as generous and mean-spirited, moody and a party animal, macho and feminine, wise for his years and supremely adolescent. Film and television directors who worked with Jimmy referred to him in such contradictory terms as tractable, impossible, arrogant, and open to suggestion. Some who knew him claim he was a manicdepressive with a death wish while others believe he had a tremen-

dous lust for life. Everyone agrees that he was a fascinating person and tremendously gifted actor who was able to tap into something

deep inside of himself

that resonates within

all

of us.

Chapter One

THE OUTSIDER

James Dean grew up sier

town with

in

Hoohad changed very

Fairmount, Indiana,

a population of 2,600 that

a small

since the turn of the century. Business buildings extended for two blocks along Main Street, and the town's institutions included a weekly newspaper, The Fairmount News, a volunteer fire department, an elementary school, fifteen churches, including three Quaker meeting houses and one Baptist church, a railroad depot that had seen busier days, and a few quiet factories. Surrounding the town was rich farmland. Beneath the prosaic surface, however, Fairmount differed from most other Midwestern towns. For every 230 persons in Fairmount, one had been listed in Who's Who fourteen times the national average at the time. And of those natives, most were teachers or college presidents or writers. There were no actors, for the culture of Fairmount was not conducive to breeding them. The one movie house in town was closed because the townspeople, most of them Quakers, would not support it. The first Deans to settle in Fairmount arrived in 1815 from around Lexington, Kentucky, and settled in Grant County. They were mostly farm folk, but Jimmy's grandfather Cal Dean, a drinking man before he got religion, was an auctioneer. The Deans were not poor people, but none of them were rich. Because so many of little

—

JAMES DEAN them

lived in such a small area, the

—

Dean

family

— and the

families

by marriage were closely knit. Jimmy's mother, Mildred Marie Wilson, was a short, plump, dark-haired farmer's daughter from Gas City, a town near Fairmount. Like the Deans, her family had settled in Grant County around 1815. Mildred was just twenty years old when she was introduced at a dance to Winton Dean, a tall, thin, quiet bespectacled man two years her senior. Winton had been raised to be a related

farmer like three generations of his forebears, but instead struck out on his

own and became

Administration

in

a dental technician at the

Veterans

Marion.

After a few months of courtship, Mildred discovered she was

pregnant.

The

only one

way

was marriage. Mildred was

a

such a problem in those days Methodist, Winton a Quaker, so they to solve

applied for a marriage license on July 26, 1930, and were married three days later by the Reverend Emma Payne, a minister of the Wesleyan faith. The wedding was so sudden that the newlyweds hadn't had time to make plans. On their wedding night they knocked on the door of the couple who had introduced them, Hazel and David Payne (no relation to the reverend). Winton explained that he and Mildred had just been married and had no place to spend their honeymoon night: could they spend it with the Paynes? The frame house, which had once belonged to David's grandmother, was tiny, with two bedrooms, but both couples got along well together for two weeks until Winton found lodgings for himself and Mildred in a rambling house in Marion known as The Seven

Gables Apartments. When the time came for Mildred to have her baby, she ignored Winton's insistence that she go to a hospital. She preferred to deliver her firstborn at home with the family doctor in attendance. Winton's grandmother, Ella Turner, was a midwife, and arrangements were made for her to help out. On Sunday, February 8, 1931, at 2:00 a.m., after five hours of labor, Mildred gave birth to an eight-pound, ten-ounce baby boy. Dr. Victor V.

Cameron

filled

out the birth certificate, spelling

out slowly James Byron Dean, the earlier selected for the

8

name Mildred and Winton had

boy they both wanted.

It

was

a

combination

THE OUTSIDER of the names of James Amick, chief dental officer at the Veterans

Administration in Marion where Winton worked, and ron Vice, Winton's best friend and a

florist.

Thomas By-

Dr. Cameron's

bill for

the delivery was fifteen dollars.

From

the very

first,

Mildred made Jimmy the center of her

life.

She nursed him for eight months and then bottle-fed him while rocking him on her lap. She devoted herself so completely to him that Hazel Payne, mother of a young son herself, protested that Mildred smothered Jimmy with attention. Mildred retorted, "He's all that I have, and I love him." Mildred taught Jimmy how to draw, read classics and poetry aloud to him by the hour, and played games with him. For one of their games she built a cardboard theater; using dolls as actors, the two of them made up plays and stories. From time to time they put on skits for Winton and other members of the family. Both Mildred and Jimmy basked in the applause, and Mildred was fond of saying that one day her beautiful son was going to be a great actor.

The Deans were young and all

struggling to get by, but

the toys they could afford and,

his parents'

means.

"He had

if

Jimmy had

anything, was spoiled beyond

a large anxiety to

do many different

Winton told me. "He had to try everything, and he soon outgrew most of the toys we bought him. He always seemed to be things,"

getting ahead of himself."

When Jimmy was

a toddler

Winton arranged

to rent a cottage

alongside Back Creek, a small stream that bordered the edge of the

farm owned by Winton's sister, Ortense, and her husband, Marcus Winslow. The farm was in Fairmount, just a few miles from Marion, and in an idyllic setting. The typically Midwestern two-story white

frame farmhouse resting on a stone foundation had been built in 1901 on the edge of a 178-acre lot. The house had fourteen rooms

and an expansive front porch shaded by ancient oaks and sycamores with a porch swing suspended from chains anchored in the roof. Everything a youngster would like was there on the farm: horses, dogs, hogs, and cows. Marcus rigged up a swing on a tree for Jimmy, and when the chores were done, Marcus would play with him and take him for walks. A stream meandered through the property and widened into a pond where Marcus taught Jimmy to fish for shiners,

JAMES DEAN red horses, and

bream and where they swam

in the

summer and

skated in the winter.

Faded photos taken when Jimmy was a child show the Deans to be a happy family. In most of the pictures Mildred is either holding Jimmy, a small, handsome, tow-headed smiling child, or standing with her arms on his shoulders. When Jimmy had learned to write, his favorite game was the wishing game. When he went to bed each night, he'd write out a wish on a piece of paper and place the paper underneath his pillow. Mildred would slip in while he was asleep, read the wish, and, if possible,

make

it

come

true the next day.

In 1936 the Veterans Administration transferred

Sawtelle Veterans Administration in

Winton

West Los Angeles,

to the

California.

The Deans rented a five-room furnished flat in Santa Monica, and Jimmy was enrolled at the McKinley School on Santa Monica Boulevard. Mildred also scraped together enough money to pay for Jimmy to take violin and tap dancing lessons. When Jimmy was nine, his mother, began to suffer terribly from stomach pains. X rays revealed that she had cancer of the uterus, and it was already considerably advanced. Winton wrote to his mother in Fairmount, telling her that Mildred was dying and asking her to

come

Two

to California

immediately.

days before Mildred's death, Winton, a taciturn

man

not

given to easily showing emotion, tried to tell Jimmy that his mother would not be with them much longer. "Jimmy said nothing just looked at me," Winton said. "Even as a child he wasn't much to

—

talk

about things close

to

him.

He

never liked to talk about his

hurts."

Mildred Dean died

age of twenty-nine on the and Winton at her bedside. Jimmy Winton had sold his car to pay for Mildred's medical bills and couldn't afford to go to the funeral in Fairmount. Two days after Mildred's death, Jimmy and his grandmother Emma Dean brought her body home to Fairmount on a train from Los Angeles. Each time the train stopped, Jimmy would rush out and run to the baggage car to make certain his mother's coffin was still there. For two days Mildred's open coffin lay in the Winslow living in the hospital at the

afternoon of July 14, 1940, with

10

THE OUTSIDER room. Relatives remember how, just before the funeral, Jimmy to the coffin for a final look at his mother and insisted on

went

straightening out the hair on her forehead.

He

also

snipped off a

lock of her hair.

Funeral services were held in the house. Mildred was buried in Grant Memorial Park in Marion, only a few miles from her birthplace and the Winslow farm. The next day a family conference was held in the Winslow home, and a telephone call made to Winton, who said that he had to remain at his job in California, and he had no one to take care of Jimmy during the day. "Is there anyone in the family Jimmy can stay with while I get my feet under me again?" he asked. Times were tough and farmers were just beginning to recover from the Depression. None of the Deans were having it easy financially. Crops were poor, and business in general was bad. Jimmy was an extra mouth to feed and a young one at that. The only members of the family enthusiastic about taking him in were Ortense and Marcus Winslow. They had one child, a fourteen-yearold daughter named Joan, but they had always wanted a son. They agreed to raise Jimmy as their own until Winton was able to take care of him. The Winslows were honest, hardworking, kindly people active in community affairs. Ortense, a plump, motherly woman, was a prime mover in the Women's Christian Temperance Union and played the piano for the Friends' Sunday School. Marcus, a slight, bespectacled man, was a graduate of Earlham College, a Quaker School near Fairmount, and in his youth had been a tennis player of some local repute. His nickname was "Rack," an abbreviation of racquet.

The Winslows They even

child.

accepted Jimmy as though he were their own gave up their bedroom and moved across the hall

because he liked their maple bedroom furniture. For the first two weeks in his new home Jimmy slept with Mildred's lock of hair under his pillow. But the wishing game had died with his mother. At first he was quiet and morose, and the Winslows left him alone to work out his grief, but they started him in school right

away

to

keep

his

mind busy.

A

classmate of Jimmy's in the

//

JAMES DEAN fourth grade recalls that

during arithmetic

class.

Jimmy

burst into tears at his desk one day

When

the teacher asked what was the

Jimmy sobbed, "I miss my mother." During an interview I did with Ortense Winslow shortly after Jimmy's death, I asked if he ever talked about his mother in those early days. "Only rarely," she answered. I always had the sense that Jimmy, like many young children who matter,

lose a parent, felt

somehow

responsible for his mother's death

why had his father sent him away? From conversations I had with Jimmy years later, I felt that he never forgave his father for sending him away, and carried that resentment with him all his

otherwise

life.

Pictures in the

Jimmy

Winslow family album taken

at the

time reveal

be sturdy but small for his age, with a handsome, almost He wears eyeglasses in most of the photographs because, even at that age, he was extremely nearsighted. Jimmy easily and quickly adapted to the routine of farm life: Marcus grew corn, oats, and hay. He had his chores, such as milkto

beautiful face.

ing, gathering freshly laid eggs, helping feed the stock,

and

in a

few months he knew every detail of the farm machinery. On Sunday mornings he went to the Back Creek Friends Church with Ortense and Marcus. For Christmas that first year, Ortense and Marcus gave Jimmy a drum. His days were busy with school, but there was plenty of time for play, especially in the summer, when Marcus turned the barn into a gymnasium, installed a trapeze, and instructed Jimmy in gymnastics. Many was the night Ortense had to go out to the barn to get her two "boys." "Jimmy had all the fun that could be had and then some," recalls Ortense. "He put more living into every day than anyone I ever saw." During the winters Jimmy and his friends played hockey on the creek behind the barn where Marcus had rigged up electric lights so they could skate at night. Most of the boys had clamp-on skates and used branches for a stick, but Marcus bought Jimmy real hockey skates, a regular stick, and a puck. Even as a child, Jimmy was attracted to danger and risk taking. He and his neighbor Bob Pulley made a ramp in the barn that ran from the hayloft out the barn door. At speed, they could almost 12

—

THE OUTSIDER make

to the street in a heavy dolly cart. Marcus soon put an end game, however, claiming it was too dangerous.

it

to the

There wasn't much

that

Jimmy

didn't

He

try.

teeth attempting a trapeze stunt Marcus had

broke four front

shown him (during

a

Jimmy received a dental made by his father.) He was thrown while trying to ride a Brahma bull at a county fair. He discovered a book on Yoga and rare trip to see his father in California,

bridge

practiced holding his breath until he fainted.

Jimmy seemed

be a natural actor. At family gatherings he would entertain everyone with his mimicry. If his grandfather sat with his knees crossed, Jimmy crossed his. If someone said something with a particularly odd inflection, Jimmy was able to ape the to

pronunciation to perfection to the delight of his audience.

His talent did not go unnoticed by Ortense, who when Jimmy was ten and in the seventh grade asked him to read for a medal at the Temperance Union. Jimmy was unimpressed by the stories of vice and tragedy brought by liquor

— "gory odes," he

called

them

knew that his recitations made Ortense proud. On his first outing he won a prize with his reading. He soon won silver and gold medals for other readings before the WCTU, and Ortense looked forward to the day when he would but he

compete

Jimmy

for the

didn't

coveted Pearl Medal.

want

Medal because the readmeet he wanted to attend,

to read for the Pearl

ing was scheduled for the night of a track

and when the time came he stepped up onto the stage before the audience. A baby was fussing and making noise. Jimmy stood still and seemed to be listening to it attentively. Not a word came from his lips. Then he but Ortense insisted.

walked off the

Jimmy went

stage,

to the hall,

to the humiliation of Ortense.

claimed his mind had gone blank. "I was sure then what I had suspected

all

He

later

along," Ortense said.

"You couldn't make James Dean do things he didn't want to do. He had a mind all of his own." When Jimmy was eleven the Winslows had a son of their own whom they named Marcus Jr., but called Markie. Jimmy resented the baby because he took attention away from him. Instead of spending all his spare time with Jimmy, Marcus began dividing it between the two boys. 13

JAMES DEAN Despite the love and attention he got from the Winslows, Marcus and Ortense recognized that Jimmy was not a typical farmboy. In conversations with me years later, Jimmy said that he had considered himself an outsider in a town where the principal virtues were things he deemed unimportant. Undoubtedly, the townspeople also sensed that he was different and nonconforming. He spoke his mind when he felt like it; he dressed as he pleased and disliked dressing up; he was interested in dramatics and was not afraid to admit it even though such an interest in a farm community held him up to ridicule. And he liked to be left alone. He also bore the stigma of being virtually an orphan, since his father rarely wrote, called, or visited him. Despite the honest love of Marcus and Ortense, Jimmy was always aware that they were not his real parents. In 1943

School, a

Jimmy

enrolled in the seventh grade at Fairmount

mammoth

High

red-brick building almost in the center of town.

Myrtle Gilbreath, one of Jimmy's teachers, was amazed at his fund of general knowledge. "He knew something about everything. He

keen mind." Yet his marks were only fair. His average during the first few grades of high school indicated the trend his mind was taking. He got a D in algebra, a D in spelling, and a B+ in had

a

psychology.

Gurney Maddingly, his art teacher as well as a former Broadway actor, remembers Jimmy as a promising student. One painting of Jimmy's still stands out in his memory. "It was of people coming up out of the grave. I knew his mother had died when he was a and he was always fascinated with the idea of meeting somebody after death. We talked about mediums who contacted the dead, particularly Harry Houdini, and we discussed whether the pyramids were built by the Egyptians or people from outer space. kid,

He

said,

have

'When we

finally die we'll

to wait until then.'

know

all

those things but we'll

"

Jimmy also joined the 4-H Club, more as a concession to the Winslows than out of any real love of farming. The first year he raised baby chicks, the second he grew a garden, then he tended cattle. The following year he prepared an exhibit of soils, a notion that stemmed from the fact that he had been watching a crew at 14

— THE OUTSIDER on the Winslow property. He had watched the process from start to finish and had collected soil samples from every level, and these he mounted in a box he had made himself. Hugh Caughell, Jimmy's biology teacher, recalls that the county agricultural agent had prepared his awards in advance but had nothing for a soil exhibit. "But the agent did have a grand champion rosette award for the Champion Guernsey Bull left over from the previous summer. He gave that to Jimmy, who had a sense of humor. He took it home and hung it in his bedroom." But not all of his teachers remember Jimmy so favorably. John Potter, principal of Fairmount High, remembers Jimmy as a "troublemaker," but adds, "Kids like him are always telling you that they want you to involve them in something." Marcus had always wanted to own a motorcycle as a youngster, and like many parents, he was determined that his "son" have some of the things he had missed. He bought Jimmy a Whizzer for his thirteenth birthday. By his a motorized Czech bicycle sophomore year in high school Jimmy traded the Whizzer for a small used motorcycle, and since he was one of the few students with one, he was somewhat of a local celebrity. Jimmy's favorite hangout was Marvin Carter's Cycle Shop, only a few hundred yards down Fairmount Pike from the farm. The small one-room shop was crowded most every night with youngsters and adults tinkering with their bikes and authoritatively discussing such things as cams and headers. Like many young men, they were obsessed with their vehicles and speed. Jimmy's real passion, however, was taking himself and his vehicle to the extreme limit or, as jet pilots put it, "pressing the envelope." He delighted in performing such daredevil stunts as racing along at fifty miles an hour while lying flat on the saddle. Dick Beck, a childhood friend who sometimes rode on the bike with Jimmy, recalls that he could do wheelies and lay a bike on the ground long

work

drilling a gas well

—

before such stunts

became

popular.

visited Fairmount recently, Beck showed me an apple Park Cemetery sitting on the inside corner of a sharp curve. "Jimmy would drive down the road flat out toward the curve and come so close to the tree that he could either reach out and

When

I

tree near

touch

it

or kick it."

15

JAMES DEAN "If he'd only fallen once, things might have

been different," he never got hurt, and

told me with hindsight. "Trouble is, he never found anything he couldn't do well almost the first time he tried it. Just one fall off the bike and maybe he'd have been afraid of speed, but he was without fear." Years later just six months before another fast vehicle put an end to his life Jimmy told columnist Hedda Hopper that he'd been riding motorcycles since he was sixteen. "I don't tear around," he told her, "but intelligently motivate myself through the quagmire and entanglement of your streets." Putting aside the stilted tone he could fashion his speech to suit his listeners I think Jimmy believed he was a good driver. And so did I. More important, motorcycles, like bongo drums, were part of Jimmy long before he

Marcus

— —

—

—

arrived in Hollywood, long before they

were

a part

of anyone's

screen image. Shortly after Jimmy finished East of Eden I read somewhere I honestly believe it was in Hopper's column that as a

—

—

boy Jimmy had herded cattle on his motorcycle. Since that didn't ring quite right to me, I asked Jimmy about it. His response was to roll his eyes, light a cigarette, and change the subject entirely. Jimmy also had a passion for cars. One of his school friends had a '34 Plymouth coupe with a rumble seat that had been souped up at Carter's. All the boys took turns driving it from time to time. Dick Beck recalls that Jimmy held the record for going through Suicide Curve, an S curve on a gravel road near Park Cemetery. Jimmy was able to slide through it at top speed. Once he was challenged to a race by another boy driving a Chevy. The other boy tried hard to keep up with Jimmy, but he rolled over and crashed in the curve.

Dick Beck remembers Jimmy driving Marcus's old pickup truck when it was frozen, and spinning around so fast that he ground a hole in the ice and barely made it to safety. During summer vacations Jimmy did chores such as helping Marcus bale hay. He also worked part-time for ten cents an hour in a onto the middle of the lake

canning tomatoes. At night he and his friends would pile into a car and drive to the Hill Top Drive Inn in Marion to listen to the jukebox, drink frosted malts, and try to pick up the local girls. Like most small Midwestern towns, Fairmount was basketball local factory

16

THE OUTSIDER crazy:

games between Fairmount and Marion were major competi-

and entertainments

tions

nities.

A

in the lives of the

star basketball player in a small

nonconformist can be forgiven

was going

that he

to

make

if

he

is

people

town

is

a top scorer.

in

both

commu-

a hero;

even

a

Jimmy decided

the high school basketball team despite

his size.

who had once wanted to be an athletic instructor himspent hours teaching Jimmy to dribble, pass, and shoot. In the

Marcus, self,

school gym, the other boys soon found that the small youngster

behind the ever-present spectacles was someone to reckon with. Because he was smaller than most of his teammates, he had to jump for most every shot, thus earning himself the nickname "Jumping Jim."

The

newspaper item ever published about James Dean appeared on the sports page of The Fairmount News in 1948. It called him "an outstanding threat on the High School team. Dean accumulated forty points in three games." Paul Weaver, coach of the Fairmount High School team, discovered that Jimmy, though a good player, had to be handled with kid gloves. "He wasn't too coachable," Weaver said. "I had to be careful about changing his style of play, and I soon learned not to embarrass him in front of the other boys." Weaver had discovered early on what many directors would later learn, that Jimmy was just not tractable. He wanted to do things his way or he would not do them at all. Around this time Ortense and Marcus arranged for Jimmy to go with them to visit a family where there was a young girl his age. Jimmy was polite all through the evening, and when they returned home Ortense asked him what he thought of the girl. Jimmy went upstairs to his room and in a few minutes came down with a watercolor painting of a glass of red wine spilled on a tablecloth. "This is what the evening meant to me," he said, explaining that the wine on the tablecloth was like his time first

.

.

.

wasted.

Marcus Winslow was the most important male in Jimmy's life until his junior year in high school, when he began to rebel against authority at school and at home. Like most teenagers he was aching for freedom of action and expression, and he was beginning to 17

JAMES DEAN realize that there

was

a

world outside of Fairmount where

new

sensations and people could be found.

hard to handle, and we didn't know what was the told me. "He didn't take any more stock in us Marcus matter," and refused to help out. We were at wits' end. He was no longer one of us." Jimmy began his senior year at Fairmount High in September 1948. By now a letter man in basketball and track, he decided to take up pole vaulting. Everyone told him he was too small, but his mind was made up. In his first big scholastic meet, Jimmy set a record for Grant County that was only recently broken. Having proven that he could do it, Jimmy never pole vaulted again. Because of his superiority in athletics Jimmy experienced the

"He became

sweet thrill of being a local celebrity. Important men like the superintendent of schools, Frank Gayley, would stop and chat with him, saying that the whole town was proud of him. And he soon became a role model for the younger students, who began to mimic the way he walked in a curious slouch as if perpetually waiting to straighten up and shoot a basket. The mimic was being mimicked and he liked

it.

During his senior year several factors converged that were to determine the course of his life. During that one year he discovered that he had some real talent for acting, and he was introduced to an experience that was to start him on the road to sexual ambivalence. Jimmy had a schoolboy infatuation for Dr. James DeWeerd, pastor of the Wesleyan Church in Fairmount. DeWeerd was something of a hero to most of the boys in Fairmount. During World War II he had served as a chaplain with the infantry at Cassino. He had come home with a Silver Star for gallantry in action, a Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster, and a deep hole in his stomach plus a chest full of scars from shrapnel wounds. To Jimmy, DeWeerd represented everything he felt was missing in the closed culture of Fairmount.

DeWeerd was

stocky and handsome, with

full lips, a jovial

laugh,

and blue eyes. His conversation was liberally sprinkled with spiritual homilies, but as Jimmy was soon to discover he had a dark side.

The pastor was an educated man, and 18

his

combination of evange-

THE OUTSIDER lism and genuine culture intrigued

Weerd the only man of who understood him.

the world in

Jimmy, who considered DeFairmount, and the only one

Although born and raised in the town, DeWeerd was openly of Fairmount and its limited ways of life. His soul-searing sermons fascinated the townspeople and frightened them, too. In his business suit and tie, he was not one of them; no one had ever seen him wearing overalls. He was considered "prissy" by some of the townspeople, and was called "Dr. Weird" by others. It was no secret that he liked to take a group of the young boys to the YMCA gym in Anderson and suggest that they all swim nude

critical

—

together, a cause of

some

gossip in town.

Jimmy had never been in a home like the one DeWeerd shared with his aged mother. For one thing there was a flower garden outside the house, one of perhaps two

homes

town with such an extravagance. At dinner there was white linen and gleaming silver on the table, and colored light bulbs in the lamps. They dined to the music of Tchaikovsky and talked about poets and philosophy. Jimmy had not been exposed to a sophisticated world except in the movies he saw, but he had a good mind and was aware that there was more to life than farming and Fairmount, the small parochial town that DeWeerd derided. The older man realized that Jimmy was different, that he had ambitions to get more out of life than was available in Fairmount, and he took on the role of mentor. Jimmy soon became a welcome guest at the DeWeerd home, and he spent many evenings watching movies the pastor had taken of his vacations and bullfights in Mexico. DeWeerd introduced each new adventure by saying, "The more things you know how to do, and the more things you experience, the better off you will be." In the light of what was to come, that philosophy had ominous in

undertones.

A

year after Jimmy's death, Dr.

Jimmy

often

went

DeWeerd

told

me how

he and

for long rides in the country in his convertible.

During one of those drives, DeWeerd turned off the main road and parked under a tree. He had rarely talked with Jimmy about his wartime adventures, but on this day he told Jimmy how he had

wound in his stomach. He then asked Jimmy if put his hand inside the wound, which was almost

gotten the gaping

he would

like to

19

JAMES DEAN deep enough for the boy's excited Jimmy.

entire

fist.

The

intimacy frightened and

To DeWeerd, Jimmy

poured out his belief that he must be evil, have died and his father would not have would not mother or his sent him away. Jimmy confided that he was afraid that people would suspect how evil he was and not love him. DeWeerd confirmed Jimmy's beliefs. "I taught Jim that he was depraved and vile, that he had to seek salvation," DeWeerd said. And who better to offer salvation

On

than the pastor himself?

other drives there were more personal intimacies, and soon

Jimmy was warned he must never was the beginning of a homosexual relationship that would endure over many years, during which time DeWeerd came to consider Jimmy his protege. "Jimmy never mentioned our relationship nor did I," the pastor told me. "It would not have helped they had a secret bond that reveal. It

either of us."

would have been essentially impossible for a male in this country to grow up without feeling that any kind of homosexual contact was sinful or sick, in addition to being illegal. I can only imagine the mixed message Jimmy must have received when he was seduced by a religious person, a man above moral reproach. Some youngsters would have been so terrified of homosexual contact that they would have hit or run away from the pastor. There are others who would not have been overawed by their mentor, and would have said they didn't want anything to do with him. But Jimmy did neither of these things, presumably because he didn't have that strong an inhibition against male-male contact based on his acceptance of the pastor's philosophy that new experiences contribute to mental growth. And, of course, DeWeerd was only confirming what Jimmy had suspected about himself all along that he was basically evil, for otherwise his mother would Forty-five years ago

it

—

never have

left

Jimmy once

him. told

me

that, as a child,

he had made up

his

mind

not to be physically or mentally confined to small-town morality

and thinking. Therefore his relationship

didn't

20

come

to

it

may have been

easier for

him

to accept

with DeWeerd, especially when he found the world

an end because of their "sinfui" relationship.

THE OUTSIDER because of his relationship with DeWeerd, Jimmy began to have doubts about his masculinity. Perhaps to put those doubts to rest, to prove that he was not "queer" or a "fairy," It is likely that,

with Elizabeth McPherson, a young physical education teacher at the high school who was also an art student.

he started an

affair

Gurney Maddingly remembers that Jimmy was always in the church where Betty worked on her art. Sometimes while Betty was working, Jimmy would climb up into the belfry, where he carved his name on the wood rafters. "Every time I went by the church

He told me that he marry him she but said there was too much had asked her to difference in their ages. I got married when I was forty-three and my wife was twenty, so I wasn't the one to talk with him about age

when they were

together, the door was locked.

differences."

The

simple reality that was to distinguish

—

much

of Jimmy's later

was being formulated he was able to have sex with either a or a woman, and with ease. But he was enough of a Quaker to believe that what he was doing was wrong. As a result I believe that he established a pattern, one that would characterize his later relationships with friends, male as well as female: he would never let anyone get truly close to him. Toward the end of his senior year, Jimmy went with DeWeerd to Indianapolis to watch a race and was introduced to Cannonball Baker, a famous racing driver. A few days later the pastor and Jimmy talked about automobile racing and of the possibility of sudden death. life

man

Jimmy to believe in personal immortality," DeWeerd me many years ago. "He had no fear of death because he

"I taught told

—

—

do that death is merely control of mind over matter." That must have been an intriguing philosophy to a young man who drove flat out whenever the opportunity presented itself. In the spring of 1949, Jimmy was one of two Fairmount High students to win the state competition of the National Forensic League held in Peru, Indiana, which entitled him to enter the Nationals to be held in Longmont, Colorado. The Fairmount News ran pictures of Jimmy and the other student with the headline: f.h.s. students win state meets. Marcus was dumbfounded at believed

as

I

21

JAMES DEAN the news; Jimmy had never mentioned the league at home. The Winslows felt the gap widening between them and Jimmy. With DeWeerd and Adeline Nail, his school drama teacher, as his mentors, Jimmy prepared for the national competition by memorizing "The Madman," from Dickens's Pickwick Papers. He lay upstairs in his bed at night reading the story by flashlight because he wanted to downplay the importance of the contest to Marcus and Ortense on the chance that he failed to win. And he occasionally baby-sat for Gurney Maddingly's young son and daughter, using the occasion as an excuse to read his lines aloud into Gurney's wire recorder and then play the lines back. On weekends, when Maddingly visited his sick father in Muncie, he would leave the house unlocked so Jimmy could use the recorder. Adeline Nail recalls that, from the start, Jimmy had a natural feeling for the mood contrasts required by the monologue, which opens with a scream and calls for the character to subtly drift from sanity to madness and back again. One day in class, David Fox, a junior, began to make sarcastic remarks about Jimmy's reading. Despite Mrs. Nail's admonitions to David to quiet down, he continued heckling Jimmy. "What' re you trying to do, Dean?" Fox asked. "We know you're a great talent, a regular John Barrymore." Jimmy's blue eyes blazed as he told Fox to shut up or he'd shut him up, but the taunting continued as the other students snickered. After class everyone went to the playground where the two boys squared off and scuffled. Roland DuBois, the school principal, happened on the brawl and demanded to know who threw the first punch. Both boys were silent. "You're both expelled," DuBois said with finality. Then Jimmy spoke up. "I threw the first punch, sir." He was expelled from school but soon reinstated. A year after Jimmy's death I dramatized the effect the suspension had on him and his family in a Redbook magazine article based on interviews with Ortense and Marcus.

—

The

teenage boy

sat

slumped on

looked over the rims of his glasses

22

his

motorcycle and

at the

words: Mildred

THE OUTSIDER Wilson Dean, 1910-1940. A choking sensation crept into his throat. His mind hurled questions at the tombstone. Why did you die and leave me? Were you in much pain? How does it feel to be dead? In the distance he saw a car entering the gate of the cemetery. He kicked at the starter pedal, gunned the motor, and left in a roar of speed. He hurtled down the country road and let the cold wind sweep the dark thoughts from his mind. Ahead of him was Marion, Indiana. Without being aware of it, he detoured to drive past the house where he had been born. Back on the highway he sped toward Gas City. Within minutes he was in front of Charles Nolan's house. Charles was the uncle who had taught him to ride. He gunned the motor impatiently, waiting for a sign from the house. There was none. His calling card was a trail of blue exhaust.

It

From Gas City he headed toward Fairmount and home. was supper time, and he knew Ortense would be wait-

ing dinner for him. Before reaching the crossroads, he hesitated a moment but took the highway through town even though it meant he would be a few minutes later. He was in no hurry to face Marcus and Ortense, who must already have heard that he had been expelled from school. In the distance he saw a car about to turn onto the highway. He quickly calculated the speed of the car and its distance from him. He could make it. Only a second of time was saved, but James Dean hated slowing down. The roar of his coming preceded him. Marvin Carter, owner of Carter's Cycle Shop, said to his wife, Alice, "Here comes Jimmy Dean." "There went Jimmy Dean, you mean," she said with a laugh.

"That boy sure

is

a pistol, ain't

he," said a young

lounging in the shop.

"Yeah," open."

said

Carter.

"He's got one speed

man

— wide 23

JAMES DEAN Past the Back Creek Friends Church sped the boy on

Then, hardly slowing down, he skidded the machine into the driveway of his home. He gunned the motor as he went past the front door on his way to the barn. The sound of the machine and the rumble of its wheels on the boards caused the cows underthe motorcycle.

neath to

He

move

restlessly in their stalls.

pursed his

rustling to listen.

and mooed. The cows stopped their He giggled with delight. Heavily stomp-

lips

ing on the boards he shuffled toward the farm house.

There was no one set for supper.

you,

From

in the

dining area, but the table was

the kitchen Ortense called, "That

Jimmy?"

"Uh-h-h," he said. Marcus was in the living room reading the evening paper, round spectacles on the end of his nose. To go to his room Jimmy would have to pass him. Rather than do that he sat at his place at the table and waited for Ortense to announce that dinner was ready. It was a good meal, eaten for the most part in silence. He knew nothing would be said at the table, so he tried to prolong the minutes before Ortense would begin to clear off and Marcus would go back into the living room and the evening paper. When Ortense got up with plates in hand Jimmy offered to help with the dishes. She was firm in refusing. There was nothing left to do but wait them out. Marcus was back in the living room so he decided to try for the stairs and his room. "Jimmy!" Marcus had been waiting for him. He paused at the foot of the stairs and murmured, "Yes." "Why don't you take your gun tomorrow and spend the day hunting?" The moment he was dreading had come and gone. That was all Marcus intended to say about it. He mumbled, "Okay," and climbed up the stairs to his room.

24

THE OUTSIDER He

the door ajar slightly so he could hear what was said downstairs. left

He heard Ortense put a dish down and

go into the living

room.

"What

did you say to him?" she asked her husband.

"I told

him

to take his

gun and go hunting."

"But, Marcus, he's been expelled. This

"What

else can

I

do?

I

is

serious."

can't hit him, he's too big for

would do no good, and you know it. him, let alone punish him." tiptoed to the door and shut it. He took off his boots and lay down on the bed. The empty, unsatisfied feeling was in his chest again. He hadn't wanted to come home and face the hurt he knew would be in the eyes of his aunt and uncle. But he didn't know whether he wanted to be scolded and punished, or hugged and kissed, or ignored. He wanted something that hadn't happened. Was it always going to be that way? that, I

and besides

it

know how Quietly Jimmy

don't

to reach

The school raised the money to send Jimmy and Adeline Nail by train to Longmont. On the night before the finals, when he was supposed to discuss strategy with Adeline Nail, she telephoned his host's home only to discover that Jimmy had borrowed a car and gone out on the town. Although competitors were supposed to appear in suits and ties, Jimmy insisted on wearing an open shirt and jeans on the theory that he couldn't act crazy all dressed up. Also the entries were supposed to be no more than ten minutes, and despite Mrs. Nail's insistence Jimmy refused to cut his monologue down to less than twelve.

When

the

finalists'

names were posted, James Dean was not one

finalists in Dramatic Declamation and he had placed sixth. Adeline recalls how miserable Jimmy was, huddled in his seat and heartsick that he was out of the running. She believes, however, that Jimmy learned the consequences of not concentrating, a lesson he was never to forget. During Jimmy's tenure at Fairmount High, the school put on

of them. There were only five

25

JAMES DEAN about twenty plays, and

Jimmy was

in

most of them, doing any odd

if he was not onstage. His family attended most of the performances, but the one that convinced his grandmother Dean that Jimmy was an actor was his appearance in a church play called To Them That Sleep in Darkness. Jimmy played a blind boy so convincingly that his grandmother sobbed all the way

job that was required

through the performance. In October of Jimmy's senior year, the Thespian Club presented Goon With the Wind, a spoof on the Frankenstein legend written in rhyme by Gurney Maddingly. Jimmy played Frankenstein, and David Nail, Adeline's son, was the narrator and hero. Jimmy relished the notion of being able to screech and howl and express his anguish at being trapped in an alien body in a strange land. He got in character quickly, so quickly that one day while Maddingly was making him up, Jimmy growled and bit the teacher's hand. Maddingly also coached Jimmy with his role. "I told him that whatever you do, don't just stand still when you don't have lines. Anybody can act if they have something to say, but when you don't have lines you have to be in character and move around." Jimmy took Maddingly's advice and soon drove the other actors up the wall because he was constantly in motion during their scenes. The play, put on in the school gym, was a big success. "Jim was thrilled with the fact that the kids didn't really believe it was him in the makeup," says Maddingly. Money raised from the play, part of the school's annual Halloween festival, was used to send the senior class to Washington, D.G., in place of the class having their traditional graduation prom. The trip was memorable for Jimmy because Betty was one of the class sponsors. The group stayed at the Roosevelt Apartments at Sixin the city. The girls and boys were on separate teenth Street floors, but the boys soon found a way to tie sheets together so they could climb into the girls' bedrooms. As a result, Jimmy was able to spend his nights with Betty. On his return home, Jimmy was asked by the senior class to read the benediction at commencement, May 16, 1949, when he

NW

graduated along with a class of forty-nine other students. In his

Black and Gold yearbook, he wrote: "I bequeath my temper to Dave Fox." Underneath his picture in the yearbook the editors 26

THE OUTSIDER wrote: "Jim

him time

is

our regular basketball guy, and

will fly." Ironically, there

when

you're around

was no mention of

his acting

ability.

After graduation from high school, Jimmy, who was eighteen, was eligible for the draft. DeWeerd told Jimmy he could get a deferment if he claimed he was homosexual, a suggestion Jimmy ignored. He registered for the draft, certain that he would get a deferment because of his bad eyesight. Marcus originally had wanted Jimmy to attend his alma mater, Earlham College, but Winton, who had remarried and was presumably trying to make up to his son, wrote and suggested that Jimmy come live with him, and he would assume the costs of a college in California. Winton and Jimmy talked about the possibility of Jimmy considering sports as a career, with an eye to becoming an athletic coach. Jimmy agreed it might be a good idea, and said he'd think on it. He was determined to be an actor and thought that in Los Angeles he would have a chance to find out whether he had any real talent.

James Dean had no idea what California held in store for him, but he knew his future lay outside of Fairmount. Since Jimmy's grades were not high enough for admission to UCLA they were mostly Ds it was decided that he would go to Santa Monica City College for a semester to prepare. In addition to being near his father's home, the school had a good basketball team and a theater arts course. The night before Jimmy was to leave for Los Angeles, Marcus and Ortense held a farewell party for him at their home. The Fairmount News dutifully reported the party under the headline: james DEAN WAS HONORED AT FAREWELL PARTY MONDAY NIGHT. Many of Jimmy's friends were there, with the notable exception of Dr.

—

—

DeWeerd. Years later Jimmy told me that before leaving Fairmount he stopped by his mother's grave in Marion where he knelt at her headstone and whispered, "If you are ever remembered it will be

because of me."

27

Chapter

Two

MACBETH, JOHN,

ST.

AND A

BLOODIED CAPE was eighteen years old when Jimmy 1949 Angeles with

mother

in a small

in June apartment on

to live

Saltair

he arrived in Los his father and step-

Avenue near the Veterans

Jimmy had been in Fairmount he had seen Winton rarely, when his father visited him while on furlough from the army (in 1943 Winton had been drafted into the Army Medical Corps). Winton rarely wrote to Jimmy and sent only occasional small checks to the Winslows for his son's upkeep. Jimmy wrote to his father only when "Mom," his name for Ortense, insisted upon it, usually at Christmas or Winton's

Administration Hospital. During the nine years

birthday. told me that he resented his father for abandoning was always my belief that his feelings ran much deeper. I think it fair to say he disliked him intensely, but was enough of a pragmatist to realize that he was now dependent upon Winton for board and room, and he had no place else to go. Their first meeting was artificially cordial: it was the first real exposure to each other that they'd had in many years. Jimmy refused to call his father "dad," instead referring to him as "father," although Winton called him "son." Nevertheless Jimmy and Winton arrived at an uneasy truce: the

Jimmy once

him, but

28

it

MACBETH, apartment was small and

it

ST.

JOHN

was apparent to Jimmy that Winton was past neglect by having Jimmy live with

make up for his him and his wife, Ethel Case. Winton had remarried four years earlier and worried about how Jimmy and his stepmother would get along. Those worries were unfounded, for Jimmy soon realized that Ethel was the power in trying to

the family, and he had always liked and been able to get along with older

women, whom he allowed

to

mother him.

On

her part, Ethel

was aware that her husband felt a substantial amount of guilt about his neglect of Jimmy, and she was determined not to come between father and son. Winton courted Jimmy by spending as much time with him as possible those first few weeks: they went bowling together, and Winton tried to teach Jimmy to play golf but had minimal success since Jimmy didn't like the game and refused to cater to his father by acting as though he did. Father and son were soon at odds over Jimmy's future and there were constant arguments. Jimmy wanted to go to UCLA as a theater arts major but Winton was not impressed with Jimmy's passion to be an actor. He did not believe Jimmy had any real acting talent and considered his successes in Fairmount as kid stuff, an adolescent bug he would get out of his system. Winton was determined that Jimmy study something practical that might lead to a real career, and since he was paying the bills, he wanted Jimmy to take prelaw courses at Santa Monica City College. He promised to buy Jimmy a car as an early birthday present so he could commute to college. The used '39 Chevy sedan swung the day, and Jimmy enrolled as a prelaw student in January 1950, but he also signed up for all the available theater arts courses. Gene Owen, chairperson of the college's drama department, had Jimmy as a student in her radio class. One day as part of an assignment, Jimmy read some scenes from Poe's "Telltale Heart," and Owen thought he was magnificent. Later, during the same class, she asked Jimmy to read some scenes from Hamlet. That night when she returned home, she told her husband that she had finally found the right student to play Hamlet as she felt it should be played.

Another person

in the class

who was impressed

with Jimmy's 29

JAMES DEAN reading was Richard Shannon, a World

War

veteran

II

older than most of the other students in the class. bers that he hadn't been

the day

Jimmy

read

I

much

who was

Shannon remem-

Shakespeare until then. "But suddenly saw the whole legend come to life." for

After school and between classes

Shannon talked with Jimmy

about acting and life in general. "Jimmy had a tremendous curiosity about everything," Shannon recalls. "Ours was a kind of a father and son relationship, with me answering the questions but proud he chose me to be the one he talked with."

Shannon suggested that Jimmy seriously decide to become an actor "because it was the thing he wanted most to be." Jimmy had a full schedule. Thanks to Owen, he became an announcer on the college FM radio station, and he played substitute guard on the college basketball team. But his heart was still in acting. The school basketball coach, Sanger Crumpacker, recalls a day that Jimmy came late to practice and, when pressed for an explanation, said he had failed a screen test at a local studio. "At that time he wanted more than anything else to get into acting." After school and at night Jimmy hung out with friends at Ray Avery's Record Roundup on La Cienega Boulevard, listening to the latest jazz releases. And they cruised around the beach area, stopping off at coffee houses like the Cave and the Point. At the end of his freshman term at Santa Monica Jimmy brought home As in gym and drama and Cs in prelaw. Faced with the realization that Jimmy was never going to make it as a law student, Winton reluctantly agreed that he could enroll at UCLA as a theater arts major.

Jimmy worked

summer: he was nights a week, and

at a variety of part-time jobs that

at a Santa Monica movie house several he worked as an athletic instructor at a boys' camp in Glendora, a suburb of Los Angeles. At the end of summer Jimmy convinced Winton to allow him to register at UCLA. "I take a subject A English examination Monday," he wrote to the Winslows, and mentioned that he had joined the Miller Playhouse Theatre Guild, a summer stock company, but he hadn't been in time to be cast in any production. "My knowledge of the stage and the ability to design and paint sets won me the

an usher

30

MACBETH,

ST.

JOHN

place of head stage manager for the next production of four one act plays," he wrote.

That summer Jimmy had The Romance of Scarlet Gulch.

a small part in a musical production of

On

the playbill he

is

listed as

Byron

James.

At the start of the school year, Jimmy moved out of Winton's home, and because he needed a place to live, he pledged the Epsilon Pi chapter of Sigma Nu, a national fraternity that had a house just off campus. Manuel Gonzalez, commander of the chapter, recalls that from the beginning there were signs that Jimmy was having difficulty in adjusting to the give-and-take of fraternity life. He remained aloof from chapter activities, and spent much of his time in his room, producing Salvador Dali-like sketches, such as a bloodshot eyeball suspended in midair and staring at a burnedover forest.

Because Jimmy most often wore jeans and the fraternity brothers derisively called

some of him "plowboy" and made

fun of the "hick" with the Indiana twang

a

white

shirt,

who wanted

to

be an

actor.

Meanwhile, Jimmy had made another friend. He was Jim Bellah, son of the renowned novelist James Warner Bellah, and Jimmy's partner in fencing class. Jimmy confided his acting dreams to Bellah, who introduced him to an agent he knew named Isabelle Draesemer. Mrs. Draesemer wasn't convinced that Jimmy had any talent, but she took him on as a client as a favor to Bellah. In October Jimmy wrote home to Marcus and Ortense, "The biggest thrill of my life came three weeks ago, after a week of grueling auditions for U.C.L.A.'s four major theatrical productions, the major one being Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' which will be presented in Royce Hall (seats 1600). After the auditioning of 367 actors and actresses, I came up with a wonderful lead in 'Macbeth' the character being Malcolm (huge part.)" Bill Bast, another theater arts major at the time, saw Jimmy's last dress rehearsal from the audience, and attended opening night as well. Bast recalls wondering then how Jimmy got the role. Bast was also from the Midwest, having transferred to UCLA from the University of Wisconsin.

31

JAMES DEAN He

thought Jimmy's opening-night performance was "like an

agonizing dental extraction," a sentiment echoed by the the theater arts newsletter,

had "failed

to

who

reported that

Jimmy

as

show any growth and would have made

critic

of

Malcolm a

hollow

king."

admitted that his

Jimmy had

Shannon and performance was not good but he felt he was on

After the play's opening

coffee with

the right track.

Soon

was introduced to Jimmy by a classmate from the theater arts

after the play closed, Bast

mutual friend, Jeanetta Lewis, a Jimmy and Bill discovered that despite their differBast was far more sophisticated than Jimmy they got ences along well together. They became friends at about the time Jimmy was to be initiated into Sigma Nu. The fraternity brothers had apparently decided that normal initiation rites, like stripping the pledge nude and letting him find his way back to the frat house at night, should be suspended in Jimmy's case and a special test of manhood devised. According to David Dalton, author of The Mutant King, "The idea was that Jimmy was to go down to the bottom of the pool and lay spread-eagle across the drainage vent. Then they would turn on the drain and he was supposed to escape its whirlpool. Jimmy went down and didn't come up. It became apparent that he was drowning, and it took longer than it should have for one of the 'lifeguards' to jump in and rescue him. He pulled Jimmy out and dragged him into the locker room to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. ... He glanced at the pale, still face coming to ... he threw him his clothes from walked out." the locker room door and The last straw for Jimmy came when one of the brothers insinuated that anyone who spent all of his time talking and thinking about acting had to be a "fruit." In those days one man calling another a fruit was fighting words, and Jimmy obliged by punching his tormentor in the nose. He was shortly thereafter asked to leave the fraternity, and did so, leaving behind an unpaid bill of fortydepartment.

—

—

.

.

.

five dollars.

Since Bast was then living unhappily in a dormitory, they decided to find a place

they could share. After days of searching for an

apartment, they finally found a furnished three-room Mexican-style

32

MACBETH,

ST.

JOHN

penthouse on top of an apartment building in Santa Monica. The view from the living room with its high, slanted ceiling and Aztec furniture included the Pacific Ocean. Despite the relatively high rent of $300 a month, the boys moved in at once. Bast soon found that his new roommate could be sullen, secretive, and uncommunicative for days, and then he would suddenly become warm, open, and friendly. The moods changed almost without warning and were usually dependent on whatever was going on in Jimmy's search for acting jobs. "Acting was his life, his whole reason for existence," recalls Bast. "I don't even want to be the best," Jimmy told Bast. "I want to grow so tall that nobody can reach me. Not to prove anything, but just to go where you ought to go when you devote your whole life and all you are to one thing." Jimmy's agent, Isabelle Draesemer, got him his first job Pepsi-Cola commercial for television. In one scene Jimmy dances around a jukebox playing and singing with a group of typical young ail-American teenagers. In the second scene Jimmy wears a sailor suit and sings "Live it up with Pepsi-Cola" on a carousel in Griffith Park with five other actors. As the carousel turned, the youngsters grabbed rings. Jimmy can be seen in a close-up handing out the Pepsis. Since none of the youngsters was a member of the Screen Actors Guild, they were given lunch and a flat fee of ten dollars. Two of the other actors in the carousel commercial would, within three years, have roles in Rebel Without a Cause with Jimmy. One was eighteen-year-old Beverly Long and the other was Nick Adams, fresh from the Appalachian coal-mining town of Nanticoke, Pennsylvania. Some years later, Nick told me that he and Jimmy "had a ball" making the commercial. "When the carousel came into camera and we were to sing the lyrics to the commercial, Jimmy started substituting bawdy lyrics and throwing us all off." Jimmy made an impression on Jerry Fairbanks, producer of the commercial, and Fairbanks contacted Isabelle Draesemer asking her to have Jimmy audition for an episode of Father Peyton's Family Theater, holiday special called "Hill Number One." Others in the cast were Gene Lockhart, Roddy McDowall, Joan Leslie, Ruth

—

3.

Hussey, and Michael Ansara, a first-rate cast for the time. The TV drama was an allegorical tale that opened with a platoon 33

JAMES DEAN of American GIs trying to capture an

anonymous

hill.

The

soldiers

cheer them up. "War is a crucifixion," he says. "It shakes the earth, darkens the sun, and makes men look for a meaning in life. Why don't we think a moment about the first hill hill number one. It was taken by one man alone." At this point, bells begin to peal and the story flashes take a break while the army chaplain

tries to

—

Joseph of Arimathea and Pontius Pilate, who are discussing what is to be done about the corpse of Jesus Christ. Jimmy had only a few lines in the teleplay, in which he played

back through time

to

the role of John the Apostle. Wearing a Hollywood version of a caftan with his hair in curls,

Jimmy

looks like a choirboy. In his

who have and are discussing disbanding. Jimmy, seen in a close-up, rebukes them: "Was it for this we gave up our nets? Just to go back to our boats again?" In a later scene when the apostles discover the stone has been rolled away from the tomb, Jimmy looks toward the heavens and announces, "He will bring us enlightenment. Come, we must spread these good tidings quickly." Despite the small size of his role, Jimmy was terrified because the show, to be telecast on Easter Sunday 1951, was going out live. He also had laryngitis brought on by a bad cold, which made his voice sound deeper than usual. He earned $150, his first big paycheck, thus enabling him to make his second rent payment on the penthouse. He also acquired his first fan club: the Immaculate Heart James Dean Appreciation Society. "Hill Number One" had been required viewing at the Catholic girls' school, and some of them thought that the young man who played St. John was a doll. The girls contacted Jimmy through his agent and asked him to attend a party in his honor. Bill Bast went with Jimmy to the party, which he recalls as consisting of a lot of giggling. "The girls were between fourteen and eighteen and they had made a cake for the occasion. It was one of those embarrassing affairs where everyone just stands around a lot. Jimmy got to play the star to the hilt and he loved it, and don't think he didn't take advantage of the situation." Jimmy was broke most of the time. He had to borrow money from Bill for food, and he was always behind with his share of the first

scene he

gone

34

is

seated at a table with the other disciples

into hiding

MACBETH,

ST.

JOHN

was usually short of cash, and the two of them often ate nothing but oatmeal for dinner. During summer break, Bill, who wanted to be a writer, spent most of his days working on stories he hoped to publish or sell to films. As a result, he went to bed early at night. Jimmy, who was an insomniac as well as a constant worrier, often went out at night by himself. The Venice pier became one of his favorite haunts. He would hang out there with a ragtag crowd until dawn when he would come home and sleep off the cheap wine and his despondency most of the day. Bill's mother came to stay for a week and filled up the larder as well as cooked for the boys every night. More than once, Jimmy managed to reduce the poor woman to tears usually by ignoring her. Jimmy was constantly creating something, and Bill recalls a long rainy day that Jimmy and his mother spent alone together in the small apartment. Busy working on a mobile, Jimmy totally ignored her, leaving her almost a nervous wreck. She had also had the misfortune of arriving during what Bill calls Jimmy's Henry Miller period: all over the apartment were lewd drawings Jimmy had made in the style of Miller. When Bill's mother left, Jimmy and Bill took her to the train rent. Bill, too,

—

station.

Moments

before the train pulled into the station,

Jimmy

disappeared, only to reappear with a box of chocolates and a photo-

graph of himself inscribed she burst into

"To my second mother." Taken

aback,

tears.

Bill soon got a job working after school at CBS in the radio workshop and was able to get Jimmy a part-time job as an usher. Jimmy liked watching and later criticizing the shows for Bill, but he refused to conform to the dress code and wear a suit and tie, and he didn't like taking orders. Within a week, he had another job at CBS, which he preferred because it dealt with automobiles; he became a car parker on the studio lot. The one thing the roommates seemed to have in common was their interest in girls. Bill was dating a teenage actress named Beverly Wills (daughter of the comedienne Joan Davis), who played the role of Fluffy Adams on a weekly radio show called Junior Miss. Jimmy had just broken up with Diane Hixon, a slim, wellproportioned blonde, because, according to Bast, she was put off by the prospect of being a mother substitute. So Jimmy invited

35

JAMES DEAN Jeanetta Lewis to double with Beverly and Bill on a picnic.

The

would bring the food and the boys the wine. was pretty much of a creep until we got to the picnic, and then all of a sudden he came to life," Beverly recalled. "We began to talk about acting and Jimmy lit up. He told me how interested he was in the Stanislavsky method, where you

girls

"I thought he [Jimmy]

not only act out people, but things too.

Tm a palm tree in a storm.'

" 'Look,' said

Jimmy, arms out and waved wildly.

To

feel

more

free,

He

held his

he impatiently

He

looked bigger as soon as he did, because you could see his broad shoulders and powerful tossed off his cheap, tight blue jacket.

monkey. He climbed a big tree and swung from a high branch. Dropping from the branch, he landed on his hands like a little kid who was suddenly turned loose. He even laughed like a little boy, chuckling

Then he

build.

got wilder and pretended he was a

little thing. Once in the spotlight, he ate it in stitches all afternoon." had all us up and The two roommates continued double-dating, and sometimes when Bill had to work, Jimmy drove Beverly to CBS. Bill recalls a hot summer night when Jimmy and Beverly picked him up from work. As soon as he got in the car, Beverly announced, "Bill, there's something we have to tell you. I mean, we're in love."

uproariously at every

There was a long pause, during which Bill tried to imagine how he was supposed to react, but he couldn't think of anything to say. He wasn't upset by the announcement since he was not emotionally involved with Beverly. Also he seriously doubted that "love" would have been the word of choice for Jimmy. He knew his roommate better than that.

"We cally,

tried not to let it happen," Beverly continued apologeti"but there was nothing we could do. These things just hap-

pen."

The

matter didn't end there, however.

Jeanetta, a

who

still

dating

when she heard the news, creating Jimmy shaking Bill, slapping Jeanetta, and

flew into a rage

scene that ended with

then bursting into

When

Jimmy was

tears.

and Jeanetta left and had a chance to talk the situation over, she convinced him to move out of the penthouse as retaliation for the double cross. 36

Bill

MACBETH,

ST.

JOHN

There were no angry words between Jimmy and

Bill on the day he moved out. Jimmy merely maintained a sullen silence. He stayed on at the apartment for another month and kept his job at CBS. When he was unable to pay the rent, he moved in with Ted Avery, an usher at the studio. But he soon had somewhere else to go. While parking cars one day, Jimmy met Rogers Brackett, a

thirty-five-year-old advertising executive

Cone

&

who worked

for Foote,

New

York ad agency. One of his accounts was the weekly radio show Alias Jane Doe, and in an arrangement that was then not uncommon, Brackett was also the Belding, a prestigious

show's director. Brackett was

A

tall,

friend described

because of

thin to the point of anorexia, with curly hair.

him

as the

Noel Coward of the West Coast

his flair for witty social conversation.

According

to the

was urbane and manipulative, in addition to being fifteen years older than Jimmy. He was also homosexual. Then as now, there were many homosexuals in Hollywood holding important positions in the film industry. It was no secret in the film community that Henry Willson, a well-known agent, represented many homosexual actors, including Rock Hudson. Willson's private parties were a gathering place for the closet community. A pretty boy like Jimmy was undoubtedly a great prize for Brackett, who was a friend of Willson's. When Brackfriend, Brackett

ett offered

Jimmy

a place to stay,

Jimmy immediately moved

in

with him.

Jimmy was drawn to Brackett because he viewed him as a sort of father figure who would take care of him, something his own father had not done. Jimmy was continually short of money and he was opportunistic enough to make the trade-off Brackett wanted. Also, thanks to his recent affair with DeWeerd, Jimmy was I

believe that

not an innocent. Undoubtedly

it

was

a

convenient arrangement:

a place to live and Brackett had many good contacts Hollywood, homosexual as well as straight, who could further Jimmy's career. The relationship soon worked out to Jimmy's benefit. Brackett got him work on Alias Jane Doe and Stars Over Hollywood, another radio show. Brackett also contacted his friend Sam Fuller, who was directing the film Fixed Bayonets, a Korean War story. As a favor to

Jimmy needed in

37

JAMES DEAN Jimmy to play a GI with one line, "It's a rear guard coming back." The line was later cut, but Jimmy's one scene Brackett, Fuller hired

remained.

That summer

Draesemer got Jimmy a bit part in the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis comedy Sailor Beware. His role was Isabelle

small: he can just film

Jimmy met

later figure

be glimpsed

a

young

prominently

in a

actor

boxing scene.

named Dick

On

the set of the

Clayton,

who would

in his life.

Brackett helped Jimmy get a job as an extra in Trouble Along the Way, starring John Wayne. Jimmy also had a small role as a smartass 1920s kid in Has Anybody Seen My Gal? with Rock Hudson. In

which character actor Charles Coburn is being trained to work behind the fountain by soda jerk Rock Hudson, Jimmy, wearing a bow tie and straw boater, had one long sentence: "Hey, Gramps, I'll have a choc malt, heavy on the choc, plenty of milk, four spoons of malt, two scoops of vanilla ice cream, one mixed with the rest and one floating." Coburn's rejoinder got the laugh: "Would you like to come in Wednesday for a fitting? Thank you." Jimmy learned that James Whitmore, a film star and Broadway actor, had a small informal group that met once a week in a rehearsal hall at Twenty-sixth Street and San Vicente Boulevard. The idea of studying drama with a recognized actor appealed to Jimmy. He joined the group and quit college. One night he waited impatiently for the rest of the group to leave the room they used for an impromptu stage and classroom. Finally he was alone with the instructor. "Mr. Whitmore," he asked shyly, "can I see you for a few minutes please?" "Sure thing," Whitmore said. "Let's go get a cup of coffee." Jimmy bided his time until the coffee was served, then he got straight to the point. "Mr. Whitmore, how do you get to be an a scene in

actor?"

"There's only one way, Jimmy," Whitmore replied. "Stop pating your energy and talent. find out

And

Go

to

New

dissi-

York. There you will

whether you can take the uncertainty of an

actor's life.

while you're looking for work you'll be rubbing shoulders with

other actors, and that can be gratifying, too.

"Get 38

to

know

yourself,

and learn how

to

be yourself. Give

it

the

MACBETH,

ST.

JOHN

and don't do it halfway. Learn to have the actor's disdain for convention. Learn to study. Learn to act and above all, act. You get to be an actor by acting." Jimmy looked over the rims of his glasses at Whitmore. "Is there any place I can go to learn? What's the best place?" "Go see Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio," Whitmore said. "I don't know if they'll take you, but you can't do better." When Jimmy wasn't working, which was often, he was either total effort,

—

studying the Stanislavsky method of acting with Whitmore or dating Beverly, who picked up the checks or loaned him money. In the spring of 1951 he took her to her Beverly Hills High School prom. Jimmy was working as an usher at the time, and although he was in debt, he managed to put aside a few dollars every week so he could rent a tuxedo. "Although we sat out most of the dances, Jimmy was in wonderful spirits the night of the prom," Beverly told writer Bill Bast. "Some of the kids at school joined us and he laughed a lot and told My mother stopped by with some friends for a funny stories. few minutes, and even she was fascinated by Jimmy's personality that night. He jumped out of his chair when she came to our table and even helped her with her stole. 'Good heavens, I've never seen him like this before,' said Mother, flabbergasted but charmed." It was during the summer that Beverly saw another side of Jimmy, who was getting more and more despondent over not being able to get acting jobs. "I soon learned that it was nothing for Jimmy to run through a whole alphabet of emotions in one evening. His moods of happiness were now far outweighed by his moods of .

deep

.

.

despair.

"He was

almost constantly

in a

blue funk.

He

still

couldn't get

an acting job and he was growing increasingly bitter. I hated to see so blue. When he was happy, there was no one more lovable. When he was depressed, he wanted to die.

Jimmy become

"These low moods became so violent that he began to tell me that he was having strange nightmares in which he dreamed he was dying. The nightmares began to give him a certain phobia about death."

double life. He went with Brackexclusive parties often given by and attended by homosex-

Meanwhile, Jimmy was ett to

living a

39

JAMES DEAN uals,

dined

and went

at the best restaurants

such as Chasen's and LaRue,

to film screenings at private

homes. They occasionally

drove over the border to Tijuana, Mexico, to see bullfights. On one such occasion Brackett introduced Jimmy to the Brooklyn-born

—

matador Sidney Franklin a one-time friend of Ernest Hemingway's who gave Jimmy one of his bloodied capes as a souve-

—

nir.

Jimmy

cherished

it.

was a father-son relationship, it was also incestuous." Isabelle Draesemer saw the relationship in a different light. She believes that Jimmy was torn at this point between two different ways of life. "It was a Brackett later said of his relationship with Jimmy, "If

it

question of marrying Joan Davis's daughter or going off to live with a studio director."

The romance and

it

with Beverly had to

did late in the

summer

come to a head sooner or later, when Beverly went to live

of 1951

Cove, an exclusive residential area near friends were from wellto-do families, and they tended to patronize and look down on Jimmy, who stuck out like a sore thumb and responded to their slights by drawing deeper into his shell. One night Jimmy objected to Beverly dancing with another boy, and he exploded. He grabbed the boy by the collar and threatened to blacken both of his eyes. Beverly ran out to the beach and Jimmy walked after her, scuffing angrily at the sand. They were both miserable, and both knew it was the end. with her father

at Paradise

Malibu on the

Pacific.

Most of Beverly's

week Jimmy

called Beverly to apologize and say he was leaving with a friend for New York, neglecting to mention that the friend was Rogers Brackett, who was going there to direct a radio show and had asked Jimmy to drive across the country with him. The plan was for them to go together to Chicago, where Brackett had a short assignment. David Swift, writer of the Mr. Peepers television show and a California friend of Brackett's, was in Chicago at the time visiting his wife, Maggie McNamara, who was starring in the play The Moon Is Blue. Brackett had telephoned Swift and invited him to come by the Ambassador East Hotel where he was staying. Swift recalls that when he knocked on the door of Brackett's hotel room it was slowly opened by a young man standing in a classical bullfighter's pose

Later

in

goodbye.

40

the

He

said

MACBETH,

ST.

JOHN

with an espada pointed at him as though going in over the horns for the kill, grunting, "Toro, toro." Brackett appeared and pushed the

boy away,

man

telling

him

to

be

nice.

He

then introduced the young

Jimmy Dean. week Brackett and Jimmy joined the Swifts at dinrecalls, "When Maggie and Jimmy met it was David ner, and as instant love. They just adored each other." Jimmy promised to call the Swifts when he got to New York. From Chicago, Brackett called his friend and former lover Alec as

Later in the

Wilder, a composer living in

room

for

Jimmy

New

in the Iroquois

Brackett then put

Jimmy on

a

York, and asked him to book a

Hotel on West Forty-fourth Street.

bus

for

New

York.

41

Chapter Three

SWISHY-SWASHY When

New

York during the first days of September 1951, Jimmy had less than $150 in his pockets: he had borrowed $100 from DeWeerd in Indianapolis, and the Winslows had given him $50. He had his letters of introduction and his plan to study at the Actors Studio, but during his first days in the city he rarely wandered far from his small room in the Iroquois. He found the city bewildering and overwhelming, and ultimately thrilling and inspiring. intimidating and hostile In a letter home to Marcus and Mom written soon after his arrival, Jimmy reported: "For the first few weeks I was so confused that I strayed only a couple of blocks from my hotel off Times Square. I would see three movies a day in an attempt to escape from my loneliness and depression. I spent most of my limited funds just on seeing movies." Jimmy once told me that during his first few weeks in New York he sat through Marlon Brando's film The Men four times in two days, and he saw A Place in the Sun starring Montgomery Glift three times. He said that despite their different styles, Brando and Clift were the "greatest," and there was a lot he could learn from them. Later, when he was successful, many critics contended that Jimmy copied Brando. I think it more likely that Jimmy studied and admired Brando and took from him what he found useful. When his money got low Jimmy took a room in the YMCA on he arrived

—

42

in

SWISHY-SWASHY West Sixty-third Street and landed on West Forty-fifth.

a

job as a dishwasher in a bar

During the early 1950s, New York was an ideal place for aspiring it was the center of television production, with more than thirty live drama and comedy shows being produced each week. The demand for actors was immense, and almost any promising actor could hope to find work. Mass auditions known as cattle calls were held weekly. Jimmy found himself together with as many as a thousand other young would-be actors at these open auditions where the routine was efficient, albeit dehumanizing, for the participants. Each actor would be given a number and called up on the stage, often in groups of ten, at which time he would file past the casting directors in the audience. If a casting director was interested in a particular individual, that person would be asked to come back for a reading, or would be dismissed with a curt "Sorry, thank you for coming." Martin Landau, then one of New York's aspiring actors, met Jimmy after one such casting call instigated by CBS, which produced many live TV shows at the time. It was a rainy day, which meant that even more actors than usual answered the call at the Martin Beck Theatre because they couldn't make rounds anyway. The actors were usually in ethnic groups, and Landau, who was tall and darkly handsome, was generally with such "New York ethnics" as Sydney Pollack, John Cassavetes, Michael Toland, Paul Stevens, Ben Gazzara, and Tony Franciosa. Jimmy was usually grouped with such all-American types as Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. But on this day, Landau and Jimmy were in the same group. As they walked off the stage together Landau made a funny remark about the weather. Jimmy laughed and they walked out onto the street together and started talking about the humiliation actors because

of the experience.

walk around the streets," Landau recalls. "We stopped at a construction site and I said, 'Well, if we're gonna be out on the street, let's act like we belong on the street.' So we started to pretend we were construction foremen and shouted orders to the workmen. That lasted about twenty minutes. Then we went to Rockefeller Plaza skating rink. There was a cute girl skating and doing tricks; so we applauded her and cheered, and she became

"We

started to

43

JAMES DEAN like a

queen and turned

to us

and bowed and

we applauded some

more." As they continued down the street Landau mentioned that he hadn't seen Jimmy before. Jimmy said he had just arrived from California where he had studied acting with James Whitmore. Landau suggested they have a cup of coffee at Cromwell's Pharmacy, in the lobby of the NBC Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Known as the actors' drugstore or the poor man's Sardi's, Cromwell's featured inexpensive meals, booths where the habitually out-of-work actors

undisturbed for hours, and a bank of phones where they

could

sit

could

make

calls to their agents.

Discussions ranged from critiques

of shows or performances they had seen to tips on places where

they might find employment.

Over coffee with cinnamon

sticks,

Landau

told

Jimmy

that in

drew the column "Pitching Horseshoes," and he did a hasty pen and ink drawing of Jimmy. Jimmy then sketched Landau. Before parting company they exchanged telephone numbers and agreed to get together again later in the week. Meanwhile, Jimmy diligently followed up every lead that might get him an acting job. In Hollywood, Bill Bast had introduced him

addition to being an actor he was also a cartoonist: he

cartoons for Billy Rose's theatrical

Ralph Levy, a television director friend of his who used Jimmy as an extra on The Alan Young Show. When Jimmy left for Hollywood, Levy promised to write a letter to a friend of his in New York named James Sheldon who was supervising commercials on a variety of shows, asking him to help Jimmy if possible. Jimmy went to Sheldon's office and read a scene. The older man was impressed: "Jimmy reminded me of a young Brando, so I sent him to audition for a regular co-starring role on a television show I handled called Mama, based on the Broadway hit / Remember Mama. The star of the show was Dick Van Patten, who was being replaced because he had been drafted into the military. Jimmy got the part, but Van Patten received an exemption, and returned to the show." Sheldon liked Jimmy and they became friendly, sometimes going out for dinners as a threesome with Sheldon's wife. "Jimmy attached himself to me," says Sheldon, "and I lent him money when he needed it, and sent him to see various producers, directors, to

44

SWISHY-SWASHY and casting people. I knew he needed representation so I sent him to see Jane Deacy." So it was that Jimmy met the woman who, probably more than any other person, made him a successful actor. When Jimmy first went to see Jane Deacy, she was working for the Louis Schurr Agency. Schurr himself didn't think much of Jimmy, judging him too short and too immature. Nor did Jimmy's glasses help. Things were different between Jimmy and Deacy: it was love at first sight. She signed him immediately, and when she left Schurr to form her own agency later that year, she took Jimmy along as one of her clients. She was more than just Jimmy's agent, for she believed firmly in him and his talent and looked after him like a personal manager. Like most of her clients, Jimmy called her "Mom." In his case there was more than a little truth in the word.

November, Jimmy got

In

thanks more to his was He hired to test stunts game show hosted by Bud Collyer

his first real job

athletic ability than his acting talent.

on Beat the Clock, a popular TV in which contestants were challenged to perform stunts before the along with other young actors clock ran out. It was Jimmy's job and actresses, including for a time Warren Oates to prove that the show's stunts were in fact possible. They did so during so-

—

—

called lab sessions before each broadcast.

Frank Wayne, one of the writers on the show as well as a creator of the stunts, recalls that Jimmy was determined not to let any stunt on the show beat him. "If Jimmy couldn't do a stunt in the lab session, he would stay on his own time doing it over and over again until he finally got it, and then he'd come over with this big grin on his face and say, 'Frank, I've got it.' And then he'd kind of giggle."

Meanwhile, Jimmy and Landau became friendly and spent a lot of time together. One of their favorite spots on sunny days was a flat rock in Central Park where they rolled up their pants and shirt sleeves so they could get a tan as they talked.

Landau

recalls

how

they used to discuss the careers of Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift and their acting techniques. Sometimes they talked about

making

make

it

it was too late. "Jimmy often said that he had to while he was young," says Landau. "Although an actor as

it

before

45

JAMES DEAN man but he would always would grow into myself but he would grow out of himself, so he had to make it before he was thirty. Sometimes we talked about the possibility of dying young but we never thought that would happen to us." Jimmy and Landau also spent hours in Jimmy's room at the YMCA listening to music: Bach and Bartok and even the more we were

the

same age

look like a boy.

difficult

He

I

used

looked like to say that

a

I

Schoenberg.

Music was part of Jimmy's life, one of his few enduring interests and one of the few things he could truly concentrate on: he often spent entire evenings working out a rhythm on his bongos or playing a penny whistle he had taught himself. Other interests came and went, sometimes passing in the space of an afternoon. In New York,

Jimmy sensed the inadequacies of his Indiana education: much he had to learn. Although curious about everyJimmy had neither the patience nor the time he was always

there was so thing, in a

hurry

—

to

—

study anything in depth.

He loved books,

particularly

deep volumes of philosophy, but he rarely read them all the way through; he would read enough to get the gist of the work or a quote he could drop into a conversation. He put the books on display in his apartment or carried the weighty tomes around with him so he could give the impression of being an intellectual. Although he was often moody and liked to spend time by himself, he also liked company, particularly at meals and in the evening. He telephoned David Swift and Maggie McNamara, and he soon became a regular visitor at their apartment on Sixty-first Street or at a small house they rented on Fire Island. David Swift recalls Jimmy as a gloomy, handsome little boy playing moody tunes on his penny whistle or sitting by himself in a corner at parties sitting with a cocked eye and listening to the conversation. But Maggie adored him, and through her he met Norma Grane, an actress. The three became inseparable and spent much of their days together endlessly theorizing about acting.

Because he was invariably broke, he moved in to Norma's apartStreet and Eighth Avenue where, according to David, they lived like brother and sister. Late in the year, Jimmy met Leonard Rosenman, who looked

ment on Thirty-fourth

46

SWISHY-SWASHY and dressed like a long-haired beatnik, but was Born in Brooklyn in 1924, Rosenman had first

a true intellectual.

tried his hand as a World War II he'd turned to the study of music, learning theory and composition from Schoenberg, Copland, and Bernstein. Together with Howard Sackler (who would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for The Great White Hope in 1969), Leonard was working on an opera. After one of the performances, Leonard and his wife, Adele, a petite brunette who was also an excellent pianist, went to a party at the home of one of the sponsors of the opera. There was a Steinway piano in the apartment, and the hostess eventually convinced Leonard to sit down with her and play some Mozart two-hand sonatas. The hostess played poorly, however, and after a few minutes Leonard

painter, but after serving with the air force in

said,

"My

wife plays beautifully."

Adele demurred, saying she didn't have her glasses with her, but Leonard insisted. Adele turned to a young man wearing glasses standing nearby and asked if she could borrow his. He handed

them

to her.

The Rosenmans Carl Philipp

played together, and then Leonard played some

Emanuel Bach with

the

young man hovering over

his

shoulder.

When

Adele handed the glasses back to the young man, he introduced himself as James Dean. Adele, Leonard, and Jimmy started to talk about music, and after the party he walked back with them to their apartment on Central Park West, an enormous place with twelve rooms, including a forty-foot-long living room big enough for their children to ride bikes in. Two or three months later, at about 11:00 p.m., there was a knock on the Rosenmans' apartment door. Leonard opened it to find a young man wearing a leather outfit who said, "My name is Jimmy Dean, and I don't know if you remember me. I'd like to learn to play the piano with you." "Sure," said Leonard, mildly amused. "Come on in." Jimmy came by the apartment a few times for lessons. Adele asked her husband how it was going. "He doesn't have any talent for the piano, and he's too lazy," Leonard said. "He just doesn't know why, without being able to play notes or scales, he can't play

47

JAMES DEAN Beethoven's Opus 100, and he just won't practice." Leonard also discovered that Jimmy had a crooked finger that kept him from making the proper spread with his right hand. Leonard explained to his frustrated student that learning to play the piano

is

like

weights right

working in you have

off,

a

gymnasium. "You can't lift heavy up to them. You have to

to build

practice."

Leonard was not only a brilliant musician and composer, but he was also an accomplished artist. Leonard was everything Jimmy aspired to be. A friendship developed, with Leonard assuming the role of mentor and Jimmy the eager student. Soon Jimmy was a regular visitor at the Rosenman home. Adele and Leonard, aware that he desperately wanted to be a member of their family, adopted him. "Jimmy was really interested in everything, including music and how we were with our children," recalls Adele, who early on realized that Jimmy was trying to make up for his lack of education. "He had the ability to absorb from everyone he met something that he could digest and that would later be useful to him as an actor. He discarded the things that were not of use to him. "He mixed well with everyone and some of our guests were composers, musicians, artists, writers pretty intellectual but he was smart enough to never try to upstage anyone." Adele soon discovered to her amusement that Jimmy never came over for dinner if he knew they were having chicken. He explained to her that he couldn't stand chicken because he had grown up on a farm and had to take care of them. For that reason he also refused to eat eggs. Aside from that brief glimpse of his childhood, Jimmy

Jimmy soon found

that

—

—

never discussed

his past.

Leonard was reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. To his amusement, he noticed that Jimmy bought a copy of the book and carried it around with him. "I am certain he never read it all the way through, but he had read enough to quote from certain sections, which gave the illusion that he had read it," Leonard claims. The Rosenmans provided Jimmy with a kind of home, but he was lonely and in need of companionship. One night he went to the Rehearsal Club, a residence hotel for actresses and dancers on At one point that

48

fall,

West

Fifty-third

SWISHY-SWASHY Street — good place meet

"There were two couches in the lobby, and I was sitting in one and this boy wearing jeans and a raincoat with a magnificent face was sitting in the other," recalls Elizabeth (nicknamed Dizzy) Sheridan. "We were both reading magazines, and for some reason he read aloud something out of his magazine. Like 'I admit in retrospect that my methods were unorthodox to say the least.' " Dizzy recognized his pickup technique for what it was, but amusedly replied by reading aloud a quote from her magazine. They both laughed, and Jimmy invited her to go around the corner to have a Champale with him at Jerry's Bar and Restaurant, an Italian joint on Sixth Avenue near West Fifty-fourth where Louis de Liso, the waiter whose uncle Jerry Luce owned the place, often

young

let

to

a

up

actors run

tablecloth and the

a tab.

girls.

remember

"I

way he looked

at

me

the red-and-white

across the table," says

"We sat in a booth and talked for a while and then we drawing pictures on a napkin. I was very impressed with the way he could draw. "When we met I was ready to be involved and I guess he was too. He seemed very lost, which I found attractive, although he was shorter than I was. I can remember what we drank and how Dizzy.

started

we

sort of fell in love across the table,

we

about what Dizzy, a to

tall,

but

I

can't

remember

a thing

said."

sensuous brunette, was studying dance while trying

put together a nightclub act with two young men. She also

worked part-time

as

an usher

at the Paris

eighth across from the Plaza hotel. theater she

movie theater on

When Jimmy

visited her at the

would feed him the coffee and doughnuts

patrons waiting for the next feature.

He

often took her

set out for

home

work, or sometimes met her after one of her dance classes. They were in love, and within a few weeks they decided to

They found

Fifty-

after

move

room they could afford at the Hargrave Columbus Avenue. "I washed his me to Shredded Wheat," introduced socks and underwear, and he recalls Dizzy. Jimmy had one habit that Dizzy found hard to tolerin together.

Hotel, on

West

a

Seventy-first off

however: he used as a blanket the bloodied bullfight cape that matador Sidney Franklin had given him in Mexico. Dizzy complained constantly about the smell of the blood. ate,

49

JAMES DEAN It

was the second time

his first

that

Jimmy had

romantic involvement.

He

lived with a female, but

was, however, barely able to

and was soon embarrassed because he borrow money for his meals and bus fare. He constantly went on casting calls, carrying with him a portfolio of pictures and a brief resume. Across the front page of his portfolio, Jimmy had written, "Matters of Great Consequence," which, Dizzy explains, "was really Jimmy's way of saying it was a matter of no consequence at all; it was all bullshit." Frank Wayne, the writer on Beat the Clock, discovered that Jimmy sometimes went without eating. "We had a sponsor that made tapioca pudding, and we always had gallons of it around because the commercials were live in those days. After the show we would throw it away. One day Jimmy came up to me and asked if he could have the pudding. I asked why he wanted it. 'Man, anything would taste good right now. I haven't had anything to eat in two days,' he said. So I gave him the pudding and took him out for dinner." Having finished his work in Chicago, Rogers Brackett had arrived in New York and asked Jimmy to move in with him. Again Brackett offered Jimmy what he then needed: important show biz contacts that might lead to acting jobs, a better life-style, and a place to live rent-free. Jimmy was aware of what he would have to do as Bracken's roommate, but he was tired of being broke and struggling to make rent payments. He told Dizzy he was going to move in with Brackett. She realized that Jimmy was confused about his sexuality, and she rented a tiny room on Eighth Avenue, but stayed friends pay had

his share of the rent, to

with Jimmy.

was time for us to separate, because when we were together we were both hiding out," she says. "We stayed in a lot and clung to each other. But you can't live that way for very long." Jimmy and Brackett spent New Year's Eve with the Swifts. The other guests were Grace Kelly, who was then in love with Gene Lyons, a handsome Irishman who was starring on Broadway in "I guess

it

Witness for the Prosecution, actress

Tennessee Williams and

Bill

Maureen

Inge, and

Stapleton, playwrights

Norma Crane

—

struggling at the time to gain a foothold in the theater.

cute as ever playing the

Jimmy 50

celebrated his

them "Jimmy was all

David Swift. twenty-first birthday in February little

boy,"

of

recalls

at Jerry's

SWISHY-SWASHY with some of his friends, for the party.

Wilder,

The

pitched in and picked up the tab guests included Marty Landau, composer Alec

Bill

lyricist

who

McNamara,

Maggie

Envig,

and

Sarah

Churchill, the rebellious daughter of Britain's prime minister,

promptly got drunk. Twelve days later, Jimmy finally landed

He was

given the part of a bellhop

mountain part of the

who

his first role in television.

helps solve a murder in a

resort in an episode entitled "Sleeping

CBS

series The Web.

The

stars

who

Dogs"

that

of the episode were

was

Anne

Jackson and E.G. Marshall; the producer was Franklin Heller. Jimmy was lucky to get the part. When Heller first met him, he thought he was unkempt and arrogant. As Heller feared, Jimmy proved difficult to work with during the rehearsals and managed to so antagonize

him

—

to fire him Jimmy seemed way and not as Heller wanted it. of another director, Lela Swift, kept him

that

he wanted

determined to play the role his

Only the intervention from being

fired.

The following month he refused to take direction and was fired from an episode of the private eye series Martin Kane. That same month, however, he had two other parts for CBS, in "Ten Thousand Horses Singing," a segment of Studio One, and "The Foggy, Foggy Dew," part of the Lux Video Theatre. In May, Rogers Brackett got him a bit role in a Kraft Television Theatre episode about the young Abraham Lincoln. Later in the month he played a Vermont soldier who is court-martialed for sleeping on guard and is pardoned by Abraham Lincoln in "Abraham Lincoln," on Studio One. The next month he found himself on the other side of the historical fence, playing a Southern aristocrat in "Forgotten Children," a segment of the Hallmark Summer Theatre. Historical productions were popular television fare, and during those same three months Paul Newman one of Jimmy's closest competitors for roles was performing in such teleplays as "The Assassination of Julius Caesar" and "The Death of Socrates." The differences in the historical settings may reflect subtle typecasting, for Jimmy was to make his film debut as an American boy, and Newman would make

—

his

wearing a toga.

still living with Brackett and spending his evenings out with him and other advertising executives and television pro-

Jimmy was

51

JAMES DEAN them homosexuals. His feelings for these men between resentment and friendliness, for although he

ducers, most of alternated

disliked the role he had to play with them, they

were

a potential

source of employment. Around his straight friends he joked about the situation, referring to Brackett and the others as his "mother

hens" and making fun of the dressed-up, fancy life they led, with all its maitre d's and wine lists. He absolutely refused to attempt a pronunciation of vichyssoise, calling it instead "swishy-swashy." Despite the parting scene he'd had with Bill Bast in California,

Jimmy had to

stayed in touch with his old friend,

New York

arrival that

who wanted

to

come

himself to try his hand at writing for television. Bast's

summer gave Jimmy an excuse

to leave Brackett' s apart-

ment, where he was beginning to rebel against being on call for parties and functioning as a sort of houseboy for Brackett, occasionally serving drinks to guests and cleaning up afterward. On Bast's first day in the city, he and Jimmy got together and decided to rent a room at the Iroquois for ninety dollars a month. Room 802 was a sickly gray-green color, furnished with a chest, twin beds, a pitcher on a small wardrobe, and some faded lithographs. After only a few months at the Iroquois, Jimmy and Bill teamed up with Dizzy, who had remained friendly with Jimmy. They moved into a tiny apartment in an old, sparsely furnished brownstone on West Eighty-ninth Street. The night they moved in, they were broke because they had to pay an advance of the rent. "We had between us less than a dollar on which to eat," Bast recalls. "So, like scavengers, we took all the leftovers from the refrigerator and made a stew into which Jimmy dumped half a package of old vermicelli." As they sat eating the concoction, all of them noticed tiny bugs floating on top of the meal, but none of them said a word. Despite their poverty, the three friends had many happy moments together. They spent afternoons in Central Park where Jimmy would stand with his cape and challenge them to charge. But he continued to live a double life and remained in touch with Rogers Brackett, who still invited him to parties on the promise that he might meet influential people. In July, Jimmy, who had only the meager wardrobe he had brought with him from Los Angeles and felt shabby when he went out with Brackett, wrote to Marcus explaining his plight. 52

SWISHY-SWASHY "The hard Meaning tie

and

part

is

suit.

greatly appreciate it

the maintaining of a respectable social standing.

You must be fashionable even in the heat. Shirt, Wow. You know how I love to dress up. ... I would

clothes.

it if

you could spare ten

rather desperately. I'm sorry that

something. Sometimes

because

I

to

feel that

I

have

what you and

I

lost

Mom

repay you by being a success.

disappointments.

asked for help

try

I'll

at the

It

need always need

dollars or so.

don't write isn't an indication that

"I shall never forget

want

I

when

write

I

the right to ask; but

have forgotten. have done for me. I

forgive

me

and

I

many

takes time and

very hard not to take too long. If

wrong time please

I

have

I

I

will

understand.''

He

received a check for twenty dollars by return mail and bought

himself a brown

Now when

suit.

he went

for interviews or

out with

Brackett to dinner or parties he would at least be presentable.

Late that August Jimmy met Rod Steiger, who, along with Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and Paul Newman, was one of the Actors Studio's most talented students. Steiger had received a call from director Fred Zinnemann, who was then casting for the film version of Oklahoma! and wanted Steiger to audition for the role of

Jud. Steiger agreed. "I

found

Newman

I

was

to

do the audition with an actor named Paul

playing the part of Curly," Steiger

recalls.

"Then

Zin-

nemann told me that an actor who was scheduled had not shown up, and would I test with another unknown? I was delighted because it gave me two chances at my role. The other unknown turned out to be James Dean." Steiger eventually got the role of Jud, and the role of Curly went Gordon MacRae. From then on, Jimmy and

to singer

where they usually shared being discovered. play,

A

Steiger often

bitter jokes

met

about

at

how

Cromwell's, they weren't

short while later they acted together in a tele-

an episode of the popular

ABC

television's first science-fiction series.

series Tales of

Tomorrow,

The episode was called "The

was about a scientist (Steiger) whose wife accidentally swallows a serum for patients with mental disorders. The effect of the drug is to make her murderous. Wearing a lab coat and glasses, Jimmy had the role of the scientist's assistant and Evil Within" and

53

JAMES DEAN appeared once in to

in the first half of the

announce the good news

wear off

in

program and then

coming serum will

later,

that "the effects of the

twenty-four hours."

Don Medford found Jimmy frustrating at times because did the same thing twice. "He would do anything you

Director

he never

wanted him to do, but he would never be able to repeat the same moment, and that, unfortunately, included the staging. In other words he was the antithesis of being mechanical. He was a very natural actor who didn't know how to separate physical acting from the role itself."

54

Chapter Four

RIPPING OFF

LAYERS

One

afternoon in September 1952

Jimmy dropped by

Jane Deacy. He took a place in the waiting room alongside some of her other clients, and then noticed an attractive young blonde sitting behind the receptionist's desk using to see

the typewriter. She was wearing a red jumper and a matching red baseball cap.

Jimmy

got

up and walked over

few moments

—

to the desk,

looked

at the girl for

—

and then you writing?" Without looking up from the keyboard, and with a brusqueness she half hoped would drive him away, the blonde answered, "I'm

a

asked,

"What

paying special attention to her cap

are

typing a scene."

The

curt reply didn't work:

Jimmy

stayed put. "What's your

name?" he asked. Still

looking

down she

said,

"Christine White.

And who

are

you?"

"James Dean." Then he corrected himself: "James Byron Dean," and saying "Byron" he performed a strange little dance. Chris paused in her typing and looked up. With her first glance she thought Jimmy looked small but jaunty, agile and lean. She, too, was an actress and one of Jane Deacy's clients. She didn't have a typewriter at

home and was

using the receptionist's typewriter

while she was off on her lunch hour. She had never used

it

before

55

JAMES DEAN and was doing so now in order to smooth out a scene she was working on. Since Chris kept on typing and not talking, Jimmy retreated to a filing cabinet about two yards away. He hoisted up one arm and draped it over the cabinet. From this safer distance he continued his

attempts

at conversation.

"That's one helluva outfit," he said, nodding toward her baseball

you an actress or a baseball player?" "I don't know. Maybe both. A writer, too." Jimmy started to say something else, but she cut him

cap. "Are

you're going to cause

me

Jimmy waved

to

make mistakes

off.

"Look,

here," she said.

hands in the air and stepped away from the reception desk, walking backward. He sat down again and was soon called in to see Deacy. When he came back out of her office he didn't leave but sat down again, this time in a far corner of the waiting room. About twenty minutes later, Chris walked across the waiting room, her script in hand. She was about to leave but then spotted Jimmy sitting in his corner. She stopped near the door, turned, and walked back and stood in front of him. "I'm sorry I didn't have time to talk to you," she said. "I was

At

this,

his

concentrating."

"Yeah," said Jimmy. "Well, can we talk now? How about getting cup of coffee?" They went to the nearby Blue Ribbon Cafe. For a while they exchanged the usual formula questions beginning with "W here but neither paid much attention to the information are you from?" obtained, and in fact both just barely listened. Instead, they found themselves relaxing, laughing and joking. Chris now had a chance to examine Jimmy more carefully and decided that his eyes were too close together, but that they were framed by well-shaped eyebrows and high cheekbones balanced by a firm jaw. His mouth intrigued her it pouted or smiled or wavered unpredictably. At one point he took his glasses off and squinted around the coffee shop. Without hesitation Chris stated, "I think you look

a

—

—

r

—

better with your glasses on."

"That's good," said Jimmy, putting them back on, "because can't see a damn thing without them." 56

I

RIPPING OFF LAYERS Most of their conversation concerned

acting.

When Jimmy men-

tioned his interest in the Actors Studio Chris told him that she had an audition scheduled there and was writing a skit for herself to play with an actor. In fact, that was what she had been typing on the receptionist's typewriter. They said no more about it in the coffee shop, but as they walked together to the bus stop,

Jimmy

he could read her skit, and Chris gave it to him. It was then that Jimmy acted on James Whitmore's advice and put his name on a list for auditions to be held in November at the Actors Studio. He called Chris and said that he loved her skit and thought he might be able to help make it better. Almost as an afterthought, he said, "You told me that you have an audition at the studio coming up, but you're in the Ws. I already have my audition scheduled and I'm in the Ds, which means they'll get to me first, so I took the liberty of asking them if you can come up to the Ds with me and we can read together." Chris was appalled as well as impressed with his effrontery. "But you're too young for the part," she protested. "I wrote it for a guy who is ten or twelve years older than the girl." "Well," said Jimmy, "you don't have anyone else to play the scene with, so we don't have to stick with that. We'll just do a little asked

if

rewriting."

Jimmy worked for five weeks rewriting her story about two young people who meet on an isolated beach at a turning point in their lives. They created new dialogue and expanded the characters. They decided to name the skit "Roots," a title that Chris and

to the question "What have you been "Ripping off layers to find the roots," most of your life?" answered Jimmy. They worked at the scene constantly, often sitting in her apartment after her roommates went to work. They would rehearse on

came from Jimmy's response

—

doin'

the roof of her building to feel the flavor of the "beach," at least the sense of open

air.

They

ran the lines in buses, in taxis, at

Rockefeller Plaza, in Central Park, on crowded Manhattan street corners, and, of course, they rehearsed at Jerry's, sitting at the bar or in

one of the booths.

the original American teenagers," recalls Chris. "We wore jeans all the time, and we believed that the world was ours and

"We were

57

M

JAMES DEAN It was a time of growing up, of exploring all There was no limit. We were into the soul from

everything was possible. the possibilities.

Jimmy told me of his many ambitions: he wanted to fight bulls, he wanted to be a director, he said that he and I would have a production company. All this despite the fact that we never had any money. Whoever was working would float you could eat for a week on that. the other a twenty "When we weren't working we talked about everything because Aristotle to Nietzsche.

—

we thought we knew

all

the answers.

He

told

me

about the Indiana

farm where he had been raised and his appreciation of land and

He

told

so without

any

space.

me how much he missed his mother, but he did self-pity. He was an all-American boy, sometimes

moody, mostly always driven to succeed. "In those days sex was not as important in a relationship as it is today. You didn't always go for the physical right away, you could have a friend of the opposite sex and not sleep with them. Not that Jimmy didn't make passes at me. He did, but when he did, I wouldn't speak to him for three days, and then he'd call and say, 'Okay, let's just be friends.' Then we would be even closer as friends, friends who were not yet lovers. The expectancy was always the better feeling. "When we were in the streets together, cars and traffic were no threat to Jimmy. He told me that he knew cars, and there was no way a car was going to hit him. He would fight make-believe bulls serious, often

head-on coat.

He

in the traffic,

using passing cars as bulls to cape with his

loved bullfighting.

He

The

sport did a lot for

him

in

terms of

if you could face a live bull in a bull and hollering, a theater audience would certainly seem tame by comparison. He told me he had been to Mexico and 'danced with the bull in the ring.' He often used the rhythm of the matador, the measured footwork, in a scene. You have to look for it, but it's there. He would sometimes use that 'head-down, eyes-up look, staring at you dead-on,' which comes from staring down the bull." Throughout this period Jimmy maintained his contact with Rogers Brackett, and one Sunday Brackett invited him to cocktails at the home of Lemuel Ayers. Brackett explained that Ayers was a big-time theatrical producer who had a production planned for the

quelling fear.

believed that

ring with people watching

58

RIPPING OFF LAYERS end of the year with a part that would be ideal for Jimmy. Jimmy charmed Ayers and his wife, Shirley, never mentioning the fact that he was an aspiring actor. After socializing a few more times with the Ayerses, Lemuel asked if he'd like to crew as a cabin boy on their yacht. Jimmy accepted with alacrity and joined them on a week-long cruise to Cape Cod that August. During the cruise back, he found a chance to casually mention to Ayers that he was an actor and was in fact going to study at the Actors Studio. By then, Ayers had become fond of Jimmy so he suggested he come in for a reading for his play, See the Jaguar. Bill

a

Bast remembers the night of the reading, which was held in hotel. Jimmy's nerves were showing and he rushed

midtown

around the apartment

in a state of panic, totally disorganized, trying

to get dressed.

The

play was centered around the character of Wally Wilkins, a

whose mother, trying to protect him from of the world, has kept him locked up in an icehouse

sixteen-year-old innocent

the bestiality for is

most of his

about to die

and

—

and without explaining that she mother sends him out into the world barefoot

Before dying

his

in overalls carrying

whom If

life.

—

only her letter to a benevolent teacher

she asks to take care of him.

ever there was a part written for James Dean, this was

his first reading of the script

play's author,

went

it,

and

well, so well, in fact, that the

N. Richard Nash, asked him

to

come back

again to

read at the theater.

Nash

Jimmy came

wearing glasses with one cracked lens. Although he had read so well the first time, he read very haltingly and badly on the second occasion. Nash couldn't understand what was wrong and asked Jimmy to come see him. recalls that

to the theater

"What happened?" asked Nash. "I broke

my

glasses and can't see," explained

Nash promised him another reading and

told

Jimmy. him to go

fix his

glasses.

"I can't," said Jimmy. "I don't have any money." Nash gave him ten dollars and set up the date for the reading. "Two or three days later he came in and his glasses were still broken," recalls Nash. "But he'd memorized the entire thing so

he didn't have

to read.

.

.

.

Afterward

I

said to him, 'You son of a

59

S

JAMES DEAN bitch,

why

didn't you get your glasses fixed?'

He

pulled out this

saw this knife and I've been I had to have it. But I figured I couldn't one ... just wanting " betray you entirely so I memorized the script for the reading.' Late in October, Jimmy received a letter from Winton saying he would drive to Fairmount for a visit if Jimmy was there, and he would bring with him a partial dental bridge to replace Jimmy's old one, which was causing him problems, not a small gesture on Winton's part: he now seemed willing to go out of his way to be friends with his son. That was the only encouragement Jimmy needed to get away. He suggested to his roommates that they go with him to Fairmount for a visit. Bast then had a nine-to-five job in the public relations department at CBS and said he couldn't possibly go, but Jimmy refused to take no for an answer. He arranged for someone to call Bill's employers and say he was sick. The trip had one large attraction for all three: the promise of homecooked meals. At dawn the next day, with only ten dollars among them, the trio began hitchhiking. They got a ride: Clyde McCullough, a catcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates on his way to Des Moines, picked them up. By nightfall they were in Fairmount. The Winslows showered Jimmy with affection and made Dizzy and Bill feel welcome even though they were put off by the young people sharing Jimmy's bedroom. Winton soon arrived and, as promised, had brought a new bridge to replace the one he had made years before when Jimmy was a child. Jimmy and Winton got along well, and Winton even congratulated Jimmy on the progress he was making in New York. Jimmy delighted in showing his friends around the farm and vicious-looking knife and said,

Fairmount.

When

'I

they visited Adeline Nail at the high school, she

turned her drama class over to them.

The Fairmount

was cut short by a telephone call from Jane Deacy with good news: Jimmy had a date for a proper audition for See the Jaguar, and had to return to New York as soon as possible. Ortense prepared an early Thanksgiving dinner, and with money borrowed from Winton and the Winslows, the three friends returned to New York by bus. N. Richard Nash remembers the audition and the fact that Jimmy was "the only person in the play who caught the spirit of it from 60

trip

RIPPING OFF LAYERS the beginning. There's a great difference between a simpleminded person playing a simpleminded role, and a complex person like

Jimmy

playing

it.

He

brought a great richness to the part. There and you have never seen such

are scenes of great puzzlement,

puzzlement as portrayed by Dean. He had it. It was deep down and quite beautiful." Director Michael Gordon agreed. Gordon had interviewed more than a hundred young actors for the role and was at his wits' end because it was a very difficult part to cast. When he saw Jimmy, he knew that he was the one actor who could handle the role. Jimmy was signed and began rehearsing on October 20. One afternoon the director had difficulties with the leading lady. He berated her cruelly until Nash, who was in the audience, was unable he jumped to his feet, told the director to leave to listen anymore her alone, and then stormed out of the theater. Jimmy, who was onstage at the time, ran off to the front of the theater, where he stopped Nash. "You fight for her," he said. "Why don't you fight as hard for your play? They're ruining it and you say nothing." With that, Jimmy ran back to the theater. Meanwhile, the boy who'd had too much time on his hands now never seemed to have time enough. Whenever he was not at the theater rehearsing his lines he was with Chris going over their skit, which they were due to perform at the Actors Studio within a few weeks. They tried to get the scene down to the required five minutes, but it always seemed to run between twelve and fourteen. They finally gave up trying to shave it down and resigned themselves to letting the judges blow the whistle on them. At home Jimmy drove Bill and Dizzy up the wall asking them to read lines from Jaguar with him and kept them awake much of the night as he tried to master a folk song that Alec Wilder had composed for the show. Jimmy was tone-deaf and, as Bill recalls, "Nothing could help him with the singing." Jimmy soon decided to move out on his own. Rather than try to find an apartment, he rented a room again in the Iroquois because even though he now had a Broadway role he still didn't have enough faith in his earnings to risk a monthly rent. It was cheaper to stay week to week in a hotel, and it was easier to bail out if he ran short. Besides, all he needed was a bed, his books, sketch pads, and the

—

61

^

JAMES DEAN He wore

borrowed clothes and saved his money for movies, sandwiches, and getting around town. He also bought a lot of records. The fact that he didn't own a record player there was always someone somewhere who mattered very little had one. He would show up at parties hauling records and explain that he just couldn't pass another day without hearing some of his

all-important telephone.

—

favorites.

On November

12, 1952,

only a few days before he was to go to

Jimmy and Chris Kazan and the panel of judges at

Hartford for out-of-town tryouts of See the Jaguar,

performed their

skit before Elia

the Actors Studio.

—

Kazan or Gadge, as he has always been known in the business was born in Constantinople and was four when his Greek parents emigrated to the United States and settled in New York city, his father becoming a rug merchant. Gadge was drawn to the theater and then to film, becoming first one of Broadway's finest directors and then one of Hollywood's top directors. He had been one of the founders of the Actors Studio, home of the method style of acting, and by 1952, at the age of forty-three and at the height of his career, he had made ten films and won an Academy Award. He was considered a kind of wonderworker, particularly because of his preference for new, unknown talent. It had been Gadge who had discovered Marlon Brando a fact of which Jimmy was very much aware. As Jimmy's actor friend Bill Gunn put it, "Kazan was gold. Every New York actor dreamed of being found anywhere doing anything by Kazan. Kazan was the ultimate. If Brando was the God, then Kazan was the Godfather." Thus Jimmy was understandably nervous about performing in front of Kazan. In fact, he was so nervous that Chris was certain he would run out on her. "I can't do it," he said. "I'm not ready yet." Luckily, their props included four cans of beer, and these Jimmy quickly consumed. But then they were without props. Chris thought they could get by without the beer cans, but Jimmy refused and rushed out to buy four more, making them lose their place. But when Jimmy came back he was no longer nervous. "Physical energy is the answer," he said. "Without his glasses on, Jimmy couldn't find center stage," recalls Chris. "He ended up almost in the opposite wing, away from

—

—

62

RIPPING OFF LAYERS both overhead amber lights, which didn't matter too much because the scene was supposed to be nighttime anyway. I ran out, stood for a moment, then sat down at center stage and didn't look at him. He was startled, but immediately made the adjustment. He rolled over twice on the floor toward me, laughed, and said, wasn't in the script, and we were on our way."

4

which

Hi,'

The

scene went on past the allotted five minutes, but the bell never sounded: Jimmy and Chris were allowed to play out their scene, which ran for fourteen minutes.

When

was over the studio fell silent. Then Kazan spoke. "Very nice," he said. "Very nice." Kazan later told Chris that it was a very sensitive scene and that everyone had wanted to see the end of it. Lee Strasberg, artistic director of the studio and its guiding force, also had good things to say about their effort, telling Chris that it was well written and that they could have seen even more of it. After the audition, Jimmy and Chris ran down the steps of the Actors Studio and into the street, headed for Jerry's bar. There they scrambled onto bar stools, out of breath and already high with tension. Jimmy collared Jerry and asked, "Do you want to see the scene the way a

we

just did it?" Jerry

knew

it

it

really wasn't as

much

question as an announcement and stepped back to get a better

view.

Jimmy and

on the

Chris went through the entire scene while sitting

stools.

Out of the hundred-odd aspirants for entry into the studio, Jimmy and Christine were two of the twelve chosen as finalists, but they would not learn whether they had been accepted until the board announced its decision several weeks later. When Chris got the postcard informing her of both their acceptances, she called

Jimmy

and that night they again went to Jerry's, this time for a celebration. A few days later Jimmy went to Hartford where an unpleasant incident occurred during rehearsal of the third act of See the Jaguar.

Director Michael Gordon recalls:

"The

tension during that scene

was pretty high, and Jimmy and the prop man had words. Suddenly Jimmy took out after the prop man. I was sitting down in the audience and when I heard a commotion I jumped up onstage, but by the time I got there it was all over." Arthur Kennedy, who played the teacher in Jaguar, later told writer Ed Corley that Jimmy had pulled a knife, probably the same 63

S

JAMES DEAN one he had bought with the money Nash gave him for glasses. According to Corley, Kennedy, who was a star on Broadway as well as in films, "supposedly took the knife out of Jimmy's hand and broke the blade, with stern instructions not to pull any of that crap The matter ended there, but the story circulated in my show.' around Broadway for months. It was the afternoon of December 3, 1952, and Jimmy was scheduled to open that night in See the Jaguar. He'd not had breakfast before the final dress rehearsal and he was hungry. Huddled alone at a table in Cromwell's he saw Marty Landau in a booth with Carol Sinclair and Rusty Slocum, actors he knew, and a brunette he had never met. He waved to Marty and locked eyes with the brunette, whose name was Barbara Glenn. "Who is that incredible-looking man?" Barbara asked Marty. "His name is James Dean," said Marty, "and he's a friend of mine. Do you want to meet him?" 4

'

"Yes," said Barbara.

'

Marty went over to Jimmy and asked him to join them. "Got no one else to eat with," Jimmy mumbled. "He was physically gorgeous with a lost quality about him that immediately touched me," Barbara recalls. "It was as though he was the only person in the world, totally unattached to anything or anyone. But there was something else in his demeanor that flashed red-light warning signals at me." Jimmy was not in the mood for small talk and failed miserably at it, mumbling answers, asking only enough to find out that Barbara was a struggling actress. Nevertheless, something about her touched a chord in his psyche as well. He once told me that if he walked into a party he could, at a glance, spot the one girl he wanted to go home with, and Barbara appealed to him instantly because he sensed an intensity and neuroticism that was a match for his. Barbara was just sixteen years old with an incredible figure: an eighteen-inch waist held in by a four-inch-wide belt over a tight skirt and a thirty-six-inch bust barely concealed by a sweater. As she puts it, "I was waiting for someone to relate to me and wondered

why men

didn't look into

my

eyes."

See the Jaguar opened that night at the Cort Theatre on Broadway.

Other shows playing 64

at the

time were Guys and Dolls, The King and

RIPPING OFF LAYERS /,

In keeping with established tradition, the entire to an opening-night party at Sardi's to anxiously await

and South

Pacific.

went what New York Times theater cast

critic

Brooks Atkinson would say of

their efforts.

Jimmy

invited Dizzy to attend the party with him. "His feet

never touched the floor," she table, talking, laughing. all

I

"He

from table to watched people's eyes pouring adulation recalls.

just flew

over him; they loved him.

me. We left together because be together, but he was staying at the Royalton that night, and after we got upstairs they called and told him he couldn't have a woman in his room. So we ordered something to drink and then he walked me downstairs and put me in a cab. I had the feeling that things were starting to move for Jimmy and I would never be able to catch up. I saw him two or three times after that and then I left for Trinidad." See the Jaguar closed after only five performances. Most of the Atkinson cited none of the actors reviews for the play were bad and commented instead on the play's "tortured literary style and but all of Jimmy's notices were good, tangled craftsmanship" commending his extraordinary performance in a difficult role. Jimmy got a ticket for Christine White to attend the last performan ance. As she watched him, she felt that his jaguar gestures animal faster than a car even his pacing back and forth were

"But

it

was

we wanted

a very crushing night for

to

—

—

—

—

stealing the show.

Afterward they went back to his room over his work, what she thought of

it,

in the Iroquois and went what he thought of it

inexhaustible subjects. While on the road

Jimmy had

learned a lot

of stage lingo and had picked up more street slang and long strings of obscenities.

Because

enough

They

He

had toughened up. room was so small

his hotel

to contain the

sat

bed

—

really only a cell big

— they moved out onto the

on that metal grating

until

fire

escape.

dawn, talking and drinking

beer, punctuating their statements by letting the bottles slip through their fingers so they could hear the crash on the ground

ten floors below.

For both Jimmy and Chris that night on the fire escape was like being in a great play without an audience: only the two of them 65

S

JAMES DEAN facing the windowless brick wall of the building behind the hotel.

They were both

still

unknown and were

not yet sought after.

Even

they were excited, intoxicated with dreams and geared for the future. They concocted outlandish plots just for the fun of it;

so,

Thus when they were called in to read for a part, they had to come down, lower themselves to that other reality to read a nothing part of a prosaic bit. They believed themselves to be good competitors, hard to beat. But at the moment no

anything seemed possible.

one was beating a path to their doors. A few days later, Jimmy called the manager of the Iroquois and got a room for Chris directly below his. She moved in immediarriving with one suitately she had no furniture to worry about case and two plants, one of which she gave to Jimmy to cheer up his dark cell. They talked on the phone, visited each other's rooms, walked the streets together, went to interviews together, ate together, did scenes anywhere, anytime, for fun, for growth, just to feel alive. Although they were together constantly, Chris contends that their relationship was purely platonic. Jimmy was depressed over the closing of the play, but his reviews gave him more confidence in himself as an actor and in his ability to earn a living at his chosen craft. By then, too, Jimmy had begun attending the Actors Studio. He wrote to Marcus and Ortense telling them the news: "I am very proud to announce that I am a member of the Actors Studio, the greatest school of the theater. It houses great people like Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Arthur Kennedy, Elia Kazan, Mildred Dunnock, Kevin McCarthy, Monty Clift and June Havoc. It is the best thing to happen to any actor. I am one of the youngest to belong." The Actors Studio meant very little to Marcus and Ortense, but they responded to Jimmy's plea as they had on every other occasion when he had asked for money, and wired him twenty-five dollars. Despite his excitement at being accepted to the studio, Jimmy attended classes only rarely because as part of the studio program students were called upon to perform before the class and were then criticized, sometimes caustically, by the entire group. For his first performance before the studio group, Jimmy adapted a character from Barnaby Conrad's novel Matador, and wrote a scene for himself in which, as a matador, he prepared for his final bullfight.

—

66

—

RIPPING OFF LAYERS His props were Sidney Franklin's cape, a statue of the Virgin, and a candle. Lee Strasberg gave the scene a penetrating and harsh critique.

Jimmy

his face.

When

listened impassively, but the color drained from

the critique ended,

Jimmy

slung the cape over his the studio, furious with the criticism. He never

shoulder and left appeared before the

class again.

"The desire to better himself was not as strong as his urge for independence," Strasberg told me some years later, adding that Jimmy never went to him for personal help. "He was sensitive about letting people in too close. He seemed to shy away from people. He was afraid they would get to know him. But he was a natural-born actor with an unusual sense of naturalness and integrity."

Jimmy

told Chris

White

that he got bored

the so-called organic scenes

when he had

mounted by the beginners

to

watch

at the stu-

Of course,

he, too, was a beginner, but he didn't feel like one. determined to dodge any storm rising up in his heart as a protest to the invasions of criticism. He spoke to her about the awful feeling of tottering on the brink of maximum retaliation when crossed. He believed that if he could be in charge of what he was doing, he would be as good as he could possibly be. Shortly before Christmas Jimmy and Bill Bast had a last cup of coffee together at Cromwell's. Bill had decided to return to California and devote himself to being a full-time writer. "Just forget about the end results," Jimmy advised his friend. "Remember the gratification that comes in the work, not in the end result. Just remember who you are and what you are, and don't take any of dio.

He was

also

their crap out there."

After his short speech,

Jimmy suddenly

got up and announced,

"I've got to go."

down the street when he up to him with three came name. heard Jimmy Jimmy books in his hand, which he had apparently bought as a Christmas Bast

left

the drugstore and was walking call out his

present.

"Here," he said, "read the one called 'Harpies on the Seashore' in the Maurois Reader" Bill looked down at the books. There were paperback editions of Virginia Woolf s Orlando and Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and a hard-bound copy of 67

JAMES DEAN The Andre Maurois Reader.

"To

Bill

— While

On

the inside of the cover was written:

in the aura of

your displeasures on trip of vengeance."

this.

metaphysical whoo-haas, ebb away

May flights

of harpies escort your winged

The two

friends were not to see each other again for more than Meanwhile, Jimmy had run into Barbara Glenn again. She was with Billy James, an actor friend of his, and he invited them back to his room. Barbara recalls that "the room was heavy with the attraction between the two of us and I expected him to ask me for a date." Instead, Jimmy gave her a copy of a New Yorker magazine profile on Truman Capote and said he would call her to find out what she thought about it. Jimmy did call, and within a few weeks he and Barbara were in love, a fact that surprised Barbara, who was usually attracted to much older men and considered Jimmy a boy. The glue in their relationship, the thing that held them together, was sex, and Jimmy a year.

became

Barbara's

first

major love

affair.

"You know what's going to happen to grow up and marry somebody, and I'm going to grow up and marry somebody, but we're still going to be having an affair until the day we die." "The sexual attraction was so powerful," Barbara recalls. "There were a lot of people after Jimmy, men as well as women, but our

Jimmy once

told Barbara,

us? You're going to

physical relationship held."

Barbara

came from

a

very traditional Jewish family in Queens

home most every night, but the romance flourished. Jimmy used part of the money he had earned on Jaguar to buy

and had

to

go

used Indian 500 motorcycle. With Barbara reluctantly holding tight around his waist they cruised the city from Brooklyn to Harlem

a

with Greenwich Village their favorite spot. In those days one could get a plate of spaghetti and meatballs large

enough

for

seventy-five cents at any one of the Italian restaurants on

two

for

Thomp-

son Street. Twenty-five cents would buy an espresso at Figaro's on the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal, including a table for the

evening shared with friends. Although Jimmy loved his motorcycle, Barbara loathed and feared it. "I considered it an instrument of death," she says. "I remember half of my life with Jimmy was waiting for him because 68

RIPPING OFF LAYERS was always wondering if he was going to make it. There was an inevitability about Jimmy's death from the day I met him, which frightened me because I always had the feeling that somehow, someway, someday he's not going to show

he was always

late,

and

I

up."

69

Chapter Five

THE

LITTLE PRINCE

In

1953 Jimmy came of age as an actor. Jane Deacy, who had started her own agency, believed in Jimmy and his potential. Fortified with his good reviews in Jaguar, she was able to get him roles in seventeen television productions. He soon earned a reputation as being one of the better juvenile actors, especially

good at playing young psychotics, but he for being difficult.

also acquired a reputation

Jimmy in TV at the time recalls that and moody on the set waiting for his cue. "At rehearsals he would mumble his words as though completely disinterested in them. But, like Brando, the moment the camera was on him he came across.'' One day Jimmy learned that NBC was planning to do a bullfight drama on television and needed an expert to coach Ray Danton, the star, in some traditional matador moves. He went to see the writer, James Costigan, and introduced himself. "I studied bullfighting in Mexico," he said, "and I know all about it." In recalling the incident, Costigan told me, "I didn't know he was also an actor, but we needed a coach for the bullfight scenes so we hired him after explaining that we had very little money to

A director who worked

at rehearsals

pay.

He

said

he often

it

with

sat aloof

didn't matter.

"The next day he showed up 70

in Levi's

and

a ragged jacket

THE LITTLE PRINCE with a cape and two swords under his arm.

found out

I

later that

knew about bullfighting came from a book, but he taught Danton how to perform the movements. Later, when I offered to pay him, he said, 'Just remember me when you've got a everything he

part

I

can play/

"

Months later Costigan wrote a teleplay with a part ideal for Jimmy. He told him about it and virtually promised him the role. Unfortunately, the director on the project had worked with Jimmy before and considered him a brat. She told the producers that if Dean was in the teleplay she would quit. Costigan was out of town on vacation so Jimmy lost the part. Barbara was working steadily that spring and Jimmy was jealous of the time they were apart. Their relationship was volatile, with a pattern of breakup and makeup that was ideally suited to both their temperaments. They invariably fought just before they were to be separated. While Barbara was emotional, Jimmy seemed fearful of losing his temper and would never shout back at her or really contend an issue, which frustrated Barbara even more. Early in the

summer

Barbara got a role

would take her away from the to

have

"What

a party for her.

the hell

this

is

stock

in a

company

that

summer. Friends decided was told about it he snarled, party crap? She's only going away for two city for the

When Jimmy

weeks."

On

the night of the party,

Jimmy

and sulked,

sat in a corner

making nasty comments until all the guests except for Carol Sinclair went home. Jimmy still refused to acknowledge Barbara, who finally said, "Okay, Jimmy, if you're around when I'm back, I'll see you." Barbara and Carol went to Jerry's Bar and sat in a booth nursing drinks.

the

The more

more she

cried,

Barbara talked about

and there soon were

Jimmy and tears

his behavior,

streaming

down

her

face.

Jimmy walked

in,

looked around

the booth as Carol discreetly

left.

for Barbara,

He

reached

and

sat

down

for Barbara's

in

hand

and squeezed it. Nothing was said, no apologies on his part, but they left and went back to his apartment where they made love. had contacted Thanks to Jimmy's good reviews \n Jaguar, Jane Deacy with an offer to test Jimmy for a role in an upcoming

MGM

71

JAMES DEAN Jane had read the script and didn't feel the part was right for Jimmy, so she was holding the studio off, hoping for an offer for a better film for him.

movie, The Silver

Chalice.

That June, while discussions with the studio were going on and Barbara was away in summer stock, Jimmy performed a small part in

an off-Broadway production of a play called The Scarecrow,

di-

rected by Frank Corsaro and starring Douglas Watson, Eli Wallach,

and Patricia Neal. The performance took place in the Theatre de Lys on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. Jimmy had met Frank Corsaro at the Actors Studio, and they had become friends. Corsaro, who was five years older than Jimmy, had more acting experience and was already moving toward directing; he later became a theater director, opera director, teacher, and head of both the Actors Studio and the Juilliard School. Jimmy was fascinated by Corsaro's knowledge of music, and Corsaro found him an eager student: Jimmy studied Bach with him. Corsaro also played classical records for Jimmy, performed pieces for him on the piano, and gave him books to read. Jimmy absorbed it all with enthusiasm: he sincerely wanted to learn, and he enjoyed the lessons. The two friends also discussed literature, and spent hours discussing Kierkegaard and Kafka. Corsaro loaned Jimmy books and tried to teach him the necessary historical perspective. Corsaro liked Jimmy and believed he had a wonderful raw talent, although Jimmy lacked technique and didn't believe he needed it. Corsaro also sensed something desperate in Jimmy and tried several times to have him go into therapy. But Jimmy, like many actors, feared if he undertook psychoanalysis if he resolved his problems it would dilute his talent. Corsaro discovered that as a friend Jimmy could be fascinating but also trying. He played games with his friends and sometimes revealed a cruel streak. He drank, sometimes too much, but that was only one more kind of experimentation. He was, Corsaro be-

—

—

lieves, a

young man

in transition trying to find himself, trying to

define himself.

Jimmy had

similarly

intense conversations with other actor

much

of his time in Greenwich Village, hanging

friends and spent

out in such local bars as the Minetta Tavern, Louie's Tavern, and Rienzi's.

72

Such discussions were

a

fundamental aspect of being

THE LITTLE PRINCE "hep." Another aspect was being flat broke. Jimmy was earning money from his television performances, but Jane Deacy was holding it for him and had put him on an allowance, which he quickly consumed. When low on funds, he often borrowed money from Barbara.

Toward

the end of June he talked with Barbara on the phone,

and she admitted she was upset about her role in the play she was doing. He then wrote her a letter. "Don't be surprised if a lot of people like the Lindburger cheese. Whether the play is good or bad you will have had the chance to play a role quite outside yourself. "I guess I'm alright.

Got another

a friend of Frank's [Corsaro] in later its

cold.

Have been

staying with

Manhattan. Will move

when New Dramatist reading is finished.

to Frank's

Scarecrow will resume

run in two weeks. That means Frank will not go to upstate

NY

commence rehearsals for Scarecrow next week because of and some new people. He informed me that I could play the Scarecrow will

in

August.

.

.

I

don't have a

TV job

yet. Still

hoping

$.

"Received your check. Haven't cashed it yet. Will tomorrow. Thank you. Sorry you had to go through all that trouble. off while I see if I can get a play. Got "I'm still holding

MGM

a

new

pair of shoes honey. Black loafer "Weejuns." Shit! I'm so

proud of them. Got

a pair of pants too, not too

good but

alright.

My uncle sent me $30.00 and besides I deserved it. Made me feel good just to go in and get something." As Jimmy indicated in his letter, Douglas Watson, the lead in Scarecrow, was thinking of leaving the play, which had become quite successful, and Corsaro had offered Jimmy the lead. He thought Jimmy was right for the part, but nothing came of the offer: Watson stayed on, and Jimmy went off to do more work in television.

Jimmy soon wrote him

to Barbara

Glenn again asking her

to forgive

drunk, drink quite a lot

"such a sloppy letter, little ... In antiphonal azure swing, souls drone their unfinished melody when did we live and when did we not? In my drunken stupor I said a gem. I must repeat it to you loved one. Let's see for

lately.

.

.

.

time pretentious livers. The pretentious actor, (Don't get a headache over it) God Dammit!!

'great actors are often

a great liver.'

.

.

.

73

JAMES DEAN Come back some day. Maybe I can come do you reckon? You think you need understanding? Who do you think you are. I could use a little myself. You're probably running around up there with all those handsome guys. When I get my boat, you'll be sorry. "Hope you're OK up there. Working pretty hard. More than you can say for us poor thespians back in the city. "Got to move out of this crappy old apartment next week. Can't get along with nobody I guess. Makes you feel good when you're not wanted." Alongside his signature Jimmy sketched a fat devil and pasted a collage of eyes and mouth. By the eyes he wrote, "to see you with," and by the mouth he wrote, "to kiss you with." During this period Jimmy had no fixed home and stayed with friends. He roomed for a while with Frank Corsaro, and later he moved in with Leonard Rosenman. Leonard and Adele Rosenman were having domestic problems and had opted for a trial separation: Adele went with the children to her parents' home in Nogales, Arizona, and Leonard kept the apartment. Jimmy agreed to pay half the $300 a month rent and moved in with all his belongings: bongo drums, books, bullfighter's cape, hi-fi equipment, some record albums, and a small box. When Leonard asked what was in the box Jimmy opened it to reveal a .22 automatic. Leonard recalls asking why Jimmy needed a gun, and was told that it was only a You're terribly missing.

up and see you.

When

.

.

.

gift.

While took him all

living with to his

Leonard,

Jimmy

appointments on

dressed up and carrying

my

acted as his chauffeur and

was on the back and he was wearing his

his motorcycle. "I

briefcase,

black leather outfit," says Rosenman. "Sometimes at

an appointment

ride,

but

I

Jimmy was

would

when we arrived

be shaking from the terror of the with that cycle of his and we never

still

skillful

had an accident." For a short time Jimmy stayed

apartment of an Englishman who worked for TWA. The offer was that he could stay in the apartment free if he took care of the man's dog, a big German shepherd. While walking the dog one morning around Rockefeller Plaza he ran into Christine White, whom he had not seen for weeks.

74

in the

THE LITTLE PRINCE She smiled.

He

grinned and said only, "I'm a dog-sitter. Can you

beat that?" Chris, too, had recently

come

into a

new

place to

live.

A

friend

of hers, another aspiring actress, had gone to Europe "to look for lost golf balls," an explanation that was supposed to mean that no

one needed an excuse to go to Europe: the rule then among Jimmy and all his friends was "Just do it." The sublet was near the East River and had three rooms; since it was on the fifth floor the rent was low. The girl who'd headed for Europe left her record player in her apartment, and Chris fell heir to it. She considered herself rich. Now she and Jimmy could listen to their favorite music: Peer Gynt, Mozart, Janaceck, jazz, and more jazz. And Billie Holiday. "When Your Lover Has Gone" drove Jimmy nuts. He was also fond of the tango, and since the apartment was big he finally had enough room to teach her that famous dance. Having been to Mexico, he knew the classic steps, and as she swept around the room he would call out, "No, no, go for the whole beat. Don't take don't run use your long legs ... be broad little half steps ." then stomp and dig in spread like you're flying Along with riding the motorcycle Jimmy had taken to wearing boots, and he would often clomp up the five flights to Chris's apartment, yank off his boots, and crash onto the sofa, his legs .

.

.

.

.

.

dangling over

its

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

arm.

Eventually the period of his apartment sitting came to an end.

As he wrote to Barbara Glenn: "I'm staying in a guy's apartment while he flies to London. No dear ... by airplane! He's a TWA purser not a vampire. At least not a full-fledged one. That's why I have to leave tomorrow. He's coming back. I'm sure he considers me a victim. I do not wish to move to 's apartment now. He has been staying here with me. He also considers me a victim. I refuse to be sucked in to things of that nature. Street urchin again."

knew exactly what Jimmy was writing about. She knew from what Jimmy occasionally told her that there were certain asBarbara

he disliked, and she felt he was angry and upset with himself for his involvement with homosexuals who, he pects of his

said,

life

that

considered him as a victim.

75

JAMES DEAN Jimmy

didn't remain a street urchin for long, for he finally found

an apartment of his own, a tiny

fifth-floor

walk-up

at 19

West

Sixty-

eighth Street.

The apartment was really a maid's quarters on the top floor of a brownstone. Some light came through the round windows revealing bookshelves crammed with records ranging from Schoenberg to Sinatra; an eclectic collection of books on a variety of subjects including treatises on bullfighting and jungle drums; books on the-

from Stanislavsky to Shakespeare; children's books like CharWeb\ and novels ranging from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice to Saint Exupery's The Little Prince, which Jimmy told everyone was his favorite book. He soon furnished it to his taste. On the ater

lotte s

bookshelves were

a flute, a hot plate, a baseball bat,

sprouting from a coffee can.

new chrome music

A

bust of

and

a plant

Jimmy looked down on

a

stand that held several sheets of music. Bull

horns and a red matador's cape adorned one wall.

One day

while making rounds of casting directors Jimmy,

—

who

was dressed in his interview outfit a worn-out checked sport coat and brown corduroy pants met up with a friend of his from the West Coast, an actor named Ray Curry whom he had once worked with as an extra in a film. They were both hungry and Jimmy suggested a drugstore on West Forty-seventh that served fresh orange juice and offered thick pats of butter with its muffins. Ray noticed a friend of his at the counter and started talking with him. Finally he said, "Hey, we're all bums from the Coast," and

—

introduced

Jimmy

Jimmy had

to

Jonathan Gilmore, another

actor. Until then,

ignored Gilmore but then he noticed that he was car-

rying a copy of Barnaby Conrad's Matador.

discussion of bullfighting, and

he had seen

in

The

three got into a

Jimmy told them about

the bullfights

Tijuana, and the cape he had been given by Sidney

Jimmy asked if he could look on the counter, and flipped through it with one hand. With the other he eagerly helped himself to all the butter on his plate as well as that on Curry's. He spread the butter on his muffin and giggled as he ate it, sucking his fingers to clean Franklin, the matador from Brooklyn.

at the

book.

the butter

Jimmy

76

He opened

it

off.

learned that Gilmore had been in

New York only a couple

THE LITTLE PRINCE of months.

Most important

bullfight aficionado but

Jimmy, Jonathan was not only a owned an old Norton motorcycle.

to

he also

Jimmy and Jonathan became money and shared tips on where regularly,

meals

meeting on the same

at the drugstore.

They

They loaned each work. They saw each

friends.

other

to find

other

street corner or getting together for

started going to

movies together, and

spent one entire day watching George Stevens's

A

Place in the

Sun

over and over in a second-run theater.

One

night Jonathan was surprised to hear a knock at the door of apartment on West Forty-seventh Street. It was Jimmy, his hands covered with grease, who said he had dropped by and seen the Norton motorcycle chained to a water pipe on the street. He had smelled gas, and saw some leaking from the carburetor. He had fiddled with the bike for an hour until he had found the problem, which he explained in detail to Gilmore. A few evenings later in Gilmore's apartment, after they'd both had too much cheap wine and were tipsy, Jimmy asked Jonathan, "You ever had something to do with a guy, or just fooling around?" Jonathan told him that when he was fifteen he had gone to a Hollywood party at the Garden of Allah and Tyrone Power, who was drunk, had kissed him on the mouth, squeezed his hand, patted him on the head, and told him that he was the most beautiful boy he had seen in a long time. Since then he had been approached many times but, no, he'd never had an affair with a man, he had his

just

been experimental and trying to get around. Jimmy seemed by his friend's response and, for the moment, let the issue

satisfied

drop.

Near the end of August Jimmy again worked with television this time in an episode of CBS's Danger series called "Death Is My Neighbor." Jimmy had the role of a psychotic janitor who ends up being gunned down at a window. The star of the program was Walter Hampden. Then nearly seventy-five, Hampden was a famous Shakespearean stage actor who had producer Franklin Heller,

man in both silents and talkies. Heller had a great deal of respect for Hampden; Jimmy didn't seem to. At one point during the first reading, Jimmy suddenly threw his also

performed

copy of the

as a leading

script to the floor

and announced, "This

is

shit." Heller

77

JAMES DEAN stopped the rehearsal and took Jimmy out into the hallway. He told him about Hampden's experience and reputation and asked him to show some respect. Back onstage in the rehearsal hall, Jimmy again threw his script to the floor and swore. The third time he did it Heller threatened to

But then way. "I've

fire

him.

Hampden spoke up and took Heller out into the hallseen this young man on television," he said, "and I

think he's very talented. As a matter of

fact, I think he's going to around very rough the edges, but he's going to He's be a big be okay, and it's our duty to encourage people like that." Back in the rehearsal hall Hampden took Jimmy aside and spoke softly to him for a few minutes. Then they went back to work, and Jimmy performed perfectly. Also performing in the teleplay was Betsy Palmer, a Hoosier like Jimmy as well as a devotee of Stanislavsky. Betsy and Jimmy alstar.

ready

knew each

other

—

earlier that

same month they'd performed

—

together in "Sentence of Death," an episode of CBS's Studio One

and she and Jimmy started dating: Barbara Glenn was obviously not only out of sight, but she was out of Jimmy's mind. Neither of them had much money, so Betsy began to cook dinners for him in her one-room apartment. Most of their dates were spent walking the streets of New York together and going to movies. Betsy gave him a quilt, sheets, and bedding for his apartment, and they became

However, she would later say that Jimmy displayed little interest in sex: "As a matter of fact, my assumption about Jimmy was that he was almost asexual." That may have been true of his relationship with Betsy, but Jimmy apparently did have some interest in sex, as indicated by lovers.

another evening he spent with Jonathan Gilmore. Jonathan recalls that

on September

7,

Jimmy were James Sheldon's Jimmy was soon drunk among other things he squeezed a

1953, he and

guests at an inexpensive French restaurant.

on wine and started

to act up;

crepe suzette until the

came out, and then started to laugh Jimmy, "You're a knucklehead," and

filling

Sheldon said to rubbed Jimmy's head. He paid the check and left. By then Jimmy and Jonathan were both smashed. They walked back to Jonathan's apartment where Jimmy lay on the bed with his head hanging over the edge, looking upside down at Jonathan, who

hilariously.

78

— THE LITTLE PRINCE sat

opposite him in a chair.

They

talked about old Hollywood

Jonathan's mother had been an actress in the 1930s and he knew many of the old-time stars. At one point Jonathan tried to stand up

but he was too drunk so he ended up on the floor near Jimmy. He reached up and touched Jimmy's hair. "Man, you know more than

by Tyrone Power," Jimmy said. "You know do 'cause you've been through the same shit, haven't

just getting kissed

things like

I

you, John?"

Jonathan, who had kept a daily journal for years, noted that on that night he and Jimmy talked for hours on subjects ranging from Sidney Franklin to homosexual producers in Hollywood who had made passes at them, with Jimmy saying, "You know I've had my cock sucked by some of the big names in Hollywood and I think it's pretty funny because I wanted more than anything to just get some little part, something to do, and they'd invite me for fancy dinners overlooking the blue Pacific, and we'd have a few drinks, and how long could it go on? That's what I wanted and the answer was it could go on until there was nothto know ing left, until they had what they wanted and there was nothing left [for me]."

—

The

diary notes indicate that the undercurrent of the conversa-

was each other's attitude toward love for another man. As Jonathan recalls it, there was a strange intensity in the air as they talked. Their faces were close and Jimmy put a finger on Jonathan's lower lip and started to giggle, and then they kissed. It was the first time Jonathan had ever really been kissed by another man. Jimmy asked Jonathan, "Can you be fucked?" "Jesus, I don't think so," said Jonathan. "I want to try to fuck you," said Jimmy. They kissed then, and tried to make love. Jimmy's first homosexual contact with DeWeerd had been experimental, his relationship with Brackett was opportunistic, but he and Jonathan apparently experienced a mutual physical attraction. "Jimmy was neither homosexual or bisexual," Jonathan said recently. "I think he was multisexual. He once said that he didn't think there was any such thing as being bisexual. He felt that if someone really needed emotional support from a man he would tion

probably be homosexual, but a

woman he would

if

he needed emotional support from

be more heterosexual." 79

JAMES DEAN more succinctly when he said, "I'm certainly life with one hand tied behind my back." In September Jimmy was asked to read for a role in "Glory in the Flower," a drama by William Inge that was to be part of a CBS

Jimmy once put

it

not going to go through

program called Omnibus scheduled

Dean

suggested

to director

to air in

October. Inge himself

Andrew McCullough

for the

important

Bronco, a marijuana-smoking juvenile delinquent. Inge told

role of

Jimmy was

McCullough

that

for the part,

and McCullough, believing he could handle anyone,

him

called

Jimmy he put

hard to handle but would be just right

in.

sat

down and began up on the

his feet

out of his boot and stuck the knife and tossed

"Okay," he you read."

it

said to

reading the script. After a few lines

table in front of him, then took a knife it

into the table.

McCullough pulled out

aside.

Jimmy. "Let's cut

that out.

I

want

to hear

Jimmy read, McCullough thought him marvelous, and he got the part. The other actors in the drama were Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn. Cronyn by then well known as one of America's most

—

distinguished and versatile actors

— played the

of a shabby bar with a small dance

role of the proprietor

Eager to protect his liquor to confront is forced the dozen-odd rowdy teenagers, license, he chief among them Jimmy, who crowd his premises. Cronyn had two major scenes with Jimmy, and neither went well in rehearsal. In the first, aware that four of the teenagers were passing around a bottle of liquor, he had to confront them and demand the bottle. The scene had been rehearsed: he was supposed to ultimately find the bottle in Jimmy's hip pocket. During the final technical rehearsal Cronyn waded into the crowd, located Jimmy, but could not find the bottle. He fumbled around, looked under the table, behind cushions, under napkins, even among the plastic flowers on the table. No bottle. He finally gave up, and the camera stopped floor.

rolling.

"Where

"Why "Is his

it

worth

own way

for it."

80

is it,

Jimmy?" he asked.

don't you just find it?" challenged Jimmy. to

it?"

asked Cronyn, aware that Jimmy was trying in the scene more real. "I think I can act hunting

make

THE LITTLE PRINCE McCullough came out of bottle was,

and Jimmy pulled

his booth, it

asked

out of his jeans

Jimmy where

— he'd had

it

the

stuffed

behind his fly. McCullough stuck it back in Jimmy's hip pocket and got everyone ready to start again, for time was running out, and there was still the dress rehearsal to do.

They

enough time minutes ticking off before airtime. Cronyn's second major scene with Jimmy was a climactic one near the end of the drama. He was supposed to again wade into the crowd of teens and break up a fight, with Jimmy, of course, one of the principal combatants. This scene had been carefully choreographed so that the camera could follow Cronyn through the finished the technical rehearsal with barely

for the dress rehearsal, the

crowd on the dance floor to the scene of the fight without being blocked by the swaying bodies. When the time came, Cronyn launched himself into the packed teens and was immediately lost. He couldn't find Jimmy, with whom he was supposed to have an exchange of dialogue. He looked around wildly, pushed teens aside, crouched down, and stood up on tiptoe, but he could see no trace of Jimmy. Finally, from somewhere behind him, he heard the words "I'm here." Had Cronyn gone to where Jimmy was standing, they would both have been out of camera range and out of the light. From the director's booth McCullough called out, "Cut! Hold it! I'm coming

down."

The

normally composed Cronyn

Jimmy by

the arm, spun

lost his

temper.

him around, and pointed up

He

grabbed

to the studio

clock.

twenty-two minutes to airtime, and we haven't yet finished the dress. I don't know about you, but I'd at least like to have time to take a pee before we do this for real. For Christ's sake, be where you're supposed to be!" As the other people on the set fell silent, Jimmy responded, "I

"See

that? It says

was trying something new. I wanted to confuse you. You should be confused." "I was!" cried Cronyn, "I am! But I can act confused. Keep that experimental shit for rehearsal or your dressing room! You're not alone out here!"

By then McCullough had

arrived.

"Cool

it,"

he

said, "cool

it,

81

^

JAMES DEAN both of you! Jimmy, get your ass over here where you belong, and let's get on with it, now!"

The show went on

without further incident, and then a few

weeks later Cronyn ran into Jimmy on the street. Jimmy surprised him by throwing his arms around him in a warm embrace. Before Cronyn could say a word Jimmy said, "I forgive you you were nervous." Cronyn was left dumbfounded, but smiled. Jimmy smiled back, and the two actors continued on their separate ways. McCullough later saw another side to Jimmy when he worked with him on "The Little Woman," another episode of the Danger series. The script for the drama was written by casting director Joe

—

Scully, his

first

mind. "I used Augie," Scully

He wrote it with Jimmy help me create the character

experience writing. his personality to

"Jimmy was

in

of

bad-boy type, but no matter how bad he was, you would still want to help him and love him, and that's what we needed for Augie." Augie is a small-time gangster who steals money from the mob and hides out. He meets a little girl who offers to let him hide in her playhouse. Although McCullough thought Jimmy was ideal for the role, he remembered the knife and was worried about Jimmy's growing reputation as a troublemaker. He told Jimmy he'd heard he was having problems and that he had no intention of putting up with anything. In particular, he explained that he had hired Lydia Reed, then just eight years old, to play the little girl and that if Jimmy was difficult it would ruin the texture of recalls.

a

the program.

What happened

instead

is

that

Jimmy,

as always,

was immedi-

drawn to the child. He made fast friends with little Lydia: seemed to share a special chemistry and understanding. "Wherever she went with the performance," remembers McCullough, "he was there, supporting her. His was one of the most

ately

the two

generous performances I've ever seen." Throughout the summer and into the fall of '53 Jimmy performed steadily in television dramas: in October he had roles in three, and

he had three more that November. He had developed a reputation being extremely difficult, particularly during rehearsal, but also for being absolutely brilliant in performance. On the night of October 14, Jimmy appeared in "Keep Our for

82

THE LITTLE PRINCE Honor Bright/' an episode of the Kraft Television Theatre. The next morning he was awakened by the telephone. A girl on the other end said, "You don't know me, but I just saw you on television last night and I'd like to know you. I go to Performing Arts [high school] and Sidney Lumet is one of my teachers, but I think there's so much I could learn from you." "How old are you?" Jimmy asked. "I'm seventeen." "Seventeen," repeated Jimmy. "You know you just woke me up." "I'm sorry," said the girl, "but I'm calling between classes, and

moment I have." "Give me your name and number." The girl's name was Arlene Sachs, and

this

is

the only

number, never

Jimmy the

did

Museum

call,

of

she gave Jimmy her phone expecting to hear from him. however, and suggested they meet in front of

really

Modern

Art later in the day.

Jimmy was surrounded by

schoolgirls

When

who had

Arlene was too shy to approach him until the

Arlene arrived

recognized him.

and he was standing alone at the gift-shop counter by the sign don't touch. He was picking up things, examining and toying with them, when Arlene turned the sign toward him. "Why shouldn't I touch things?" asked Jimmy, who had recognized Arlene from her description of herself on the phone: she had long black hair, was interesting looking with big eyes, and was wearing a white angora sweater. "Because I don't want to see you get thrown out," said Arlene. "Oh," said Jimmy. "Do you like Bartok?" "Yes." "Have you ever read The Little Prince?" "Yes, it's my favorite book." "Do you like Italian food?"

"Love

it."

After touring the

dinner

girls left

at the Capri,

museum Jimmy one of

asked Arlene

to join

his favorite Italian restaurants,

him for on West

Fifty-second.

Arlene remembers

how impressed she was when they went to Jimmy was treated like a celebrity. She also

the restaurant because

83

JAMES DEAN excitement between them when Jimmy asked if she was a virgin and she said she was, but "ready." They went to Jimmy's apartment, which was cold and drafty. Jimmy motioned her to the bed and then he kissed her, after which he excused himself and went to the bathroom. When he came out he was shirtless. He sat down on the bed next to her, and they recalls clearly the sexual

began making love. "I guess he didn't realize I was telling the truth until I screamed, and suddenly there was blood all over," said Arlene. "He said, Oh my God, you were telling the truth. I'm so, so sorry. I didn't believe you.' He was very shaken and thrilled at the same time, laughing and crying, and I certainly was in a state of shock." Jimmy brought Arlene back to her apartment at 2:00 a.m. only to find her mother waiting up, stern faced with arms folded across her bosom. "You may be accustomed to bringing girls home at this hour," she said to Jimmy, "but this is my daughter, and she is very young, and this is not acceptable." Jimmy stammered an apology and left, promising to call Arlene the next day. He did call to ask tenderly if she was all right and to ask if he could see her that night. From that day on Jimmy had a relationship with Arlene that would last almost until his death. I asked Arlene what it was like to be courted by Jimmy. "We used to run in Central Park at night, and then go home and listen to Vaughan Williams's music and Ernest Bloch's 'Hebraic Rhapsody,' and he'd read me his favorite selections from James Whitcomb Riley, and we'd read books like Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse, aloud to each other. When we weren't together, we'd talk on the telephone from 2:30 to 6:00 a.m. "We spent hours doing improvisations like being Negro. Jimmy identified himself with any minority because he felt his talent made him a kind of minority. "He wanted to experience everything. Sometimes his thirst for knowledge stood in the way of living. He loved life so painfully. "He talked to me a lot about the fact that his mother had died and left him. He said he never knew what he had done wrong to deserve losing his mother and father, and that's where the guilt feelings came from. He was going through a period of self-hate 4

84

THE LITTLE PRINCE you liked him, he had no use for you because you were unable to see him for what he really was." One day when Jimmy and Arlene were walking down the street after he had done a TV show, they met some other actors, who then. If

Jimmy on his performance. He stuck his hands in his and mumbled something. Later, Arlene asked him why he

congratulated

pockets

was so rude. "I he

felt guilty that

I

was working and they weren't,"

said.

Jimmy to her cab-driver cousin, Arnie Langer, who was amazed that Jimmy was an actor. "He didn't look like any actor I ever had in my cab or saw onstage," he recalls. One night Jimmy and Arlene visited Langer in his furnished room on Twentysecond Street. Langer had just gotten a new album of Porgy and Arlene introduced

them. "Jimmy had never heard of Porgy and Bess before, but he was crazy for my album," recalls Langer. "I taught Jimmy a lot about music and how to play chess, but I never got really close to him. We'd stay up until four or five in the morning talking about music, but all I ever learned about him personally was that his mother died

Bess and played

when he was a "He used to

it

for

child.

dress like

me

and

talk like

me

but he wasn't like

me. I couldn't reach him. At Arlene's parties I was never sure if he would give me a big greeting or ignore me and sit in a corner, but he knew everyone in the room was watching him. He was onstage all

the time.

always studying working people like me, and when I finally saw him on television I realized he used me in his acting as

"He was

I knew." Langer was undoubtedly right. Like many actors, Jimmy did study people, trying to get at their essence, hoping to pick up a gesture that might be useful, absorbing their speech patterns, and sucking from them anything that he thought he might later use in

well as other people

a characterization.

When

she and

she always had

Jimmy were

alone in a room together, Arlene said

the feeling that she should

open the windows and

say, "Fly, bird!"

Life with

Jimmy was

not always fun or romantic: he had a dark

85

S

JAMES DEAN side as Arlene soon discovered.

drama

Once when they were

taking a

he pulled a pretty girl onto his lap, defying Arlene to say or do something about it. "It was shocking and cruel," says Arlene. "He was letting me know that just because he was my first lover, he wasn't mine." Soon after the beginning of their romance, Arlene invited Jimmy to a party at her new apartment. "What kind of party?" asked Jimmy.

"An "Be

class together,

orgy," said Arlene, thinking she would put right over," said

Some to

him

on.

Jimmy.

of Arlene's friends overheard the conversation and decided

continue the gag. Before

pants legs and took off their

Jimmy shirts.

arrived the boys rolled

The

girls

removed

up

their

their blouses

and everyone got under a big blanket. When Arlene let Jimmy in, he took one look around, opened his jeans, took out his penis, and began to masturbate. "That is not what I wanted to happen," says Arlene. He was calling their bluff, she believes, saying in effect, "Okay, if you want to stage a socalled orgy, I'll show you orgy." Because Jimmy was an attractive, almost beautiful boy, Arlene knew he was sought by homosexuals, who sent him gifts and offered him entrees for jobs. She also knew that several of his friends were "queer." She once asked him if he was homosexual, and he told her, "I'm a man, but if they don't let up soon, I'm going to begin to doubt myself." Arlene began to have doubts, too, because he sometimes called men from her apartment, and on one occasion he let her listen in to his conversation. The man on the other end of the phone was a prominent male star, an idol of Jimmy's, and Arlene heard the actor discuss his sex life and then say to Jimmy, "But I really want to cock you." When Arlene asked Jimmy what the actor meant by that, Jimmy replied, "You're too young to understand." Arlene began to understand a few days later when Jimmy came into her apartment complaining, "Oh, God, my ass hurts." "What's wrong?" asked Arlene. "It was Rogers, I shouldn't have been with Rogers," said Jimmy. "Things started to come together," recalls Arlene. "I thought he 86

THE LITTLE PRINCE was trying

to hurt or taunt

me,

that

it

was part of

his pattern of

him and then pushing me away. But I was terribly hurt and confused. I didn't want to believe that he would be having a homosexual experience at the same time he was making love to pulling

me

to

me.

87

Chapter Six

THE IMMORAUST

In December

1953 Jane Deacy sent

Jimmy

to audition

Broadway adaptation of Andre Gide's autobiographical novel The Immoralist. The play had been adapted by Ruth and Augustus Goetz and the theme, popular on Broadway at the time, was homosexuality (Robert Anderson's Tea and Sympathy was then in the middle of a long and popular run at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre). The main characters are Michel, a French archaeologist (played by Louis Jourdan), and his alcoholic wife, Marcelline (played by Geraldine Page). The plot was simple: while for a role in the

on her honeymoon

in Africa

Marcelline discovers, through the inter-

vention of "a colorful, thieving, blackmailing, homosexual house-

boy" named Bachir (to play the role Jimmy wore brown makeup on his face and a long, loose caftan) who arranges for the seduction of Michel, causing Marcelline to realize that her husband is a latent homosexual. Jimmy went to audition for the role of Bachir in producer Billy Rose's office on the top floor of the old Ziegfeld Theatre wearing cowboy boots, a ten-gallon cowboy hat, and a bright green vest and jeans. "He looked like a little Irishman," Ruth Goetz recalled. But the moment Jimmy began to read, everyone involved in the production realized that he had the charm and nasty sexual undercurrent they were searching for, and he was signed.

88

THE IMMORALIST "When he

me

that he had

been signed for the part I was "But I knew that Jimmy was scared. He was always scared. That's why he had such an 'I don't give a damn' facade, to cover the fear, but it was an artist's fear of 'Can I do it?' It was joy and fear mixed together." Rehearsals for the play began the week before Christmas, and Jimmy soon found he had two supporters in the production company. One was Geraldine Page, who admired Jimmy both for his talent and his pluck and whom Jimmy looked on as a mother figure, and the other was director Herman Shumlin, who was impressed with Jimmy and allowed him a lot of flexibility in his interpretation of Bachir. Perhaps for this reason, Jimmy liked Shumlin and enjoyed working with him. These relationships were established on the first day of rehearsal. During the line readings for the first act, Jimmy sat slumped over in a chair in a corner of the stage and was hardly noticed by anyone. As each actor read his or her lines, Shumiin would say, "No, no, no, no," and then give what he considered the correct reading. One by one the actors failed their lines and were corrected. The actors had enormous respect for Shumlin, considered a masterful director, and they tried their best to please him, only to fail yet again each time. Daunted by the great director, they exchanged told

thrilled/' recalls Barbara.

glances of pained commiseration.

Jimmy's character appeared in the second act, and when his first line came up, he mumbled it. No one onstage could hear him. "I beg your pardon," said Shumlin. "The first line should be read this way," and he gave his version of the line reading. There was a long silence, and then Jimmy said, "Mr. Shumlin,

why are you The other to

insulting

my

intelligence?"

actors held their breath, convinced

all

hell

was about

break loose.

Shumlin thought in silence for a while and then said, "I didn't intend to do that. How did I insult your intelligence?" "Well," said Jimmy. "It's the first reading, and you want me to read the line in a certain way. I would like to have some time to get used to who the people are that I'm supposed to be talking to and have a chance to decide some things about it first."

89